


Home Is Where You Least Expect It

by BleedingInk



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Babysitters, Alternate Universe - Human, Domestic, F/M, Kid Fic, Like super extra slow, Minor Character Death, Slow Burn, You've been warned, daddy!dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-08-31 05:49:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 125,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8566369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingInk/pseuds/BleedingInk
Summary: Dean Winchester’s wife, Lydia, dies unexpectedly leaving him alone with their newborn daughter. Despite Dean’s grief and reluctance, he finally agrees to hire a babysitter, a preppy young girl named Jo Harvelle, to help him out. Jo is a recent college drop-out trying to figure out what to do now, but one thing is for certain: she never imagined she would want to sign up for motherhood and the apple pie life.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kriszeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kriszeth/gifts).



> Originally a prompt written for Kriszeth in my blog. Hope you enjoy it!

“Dean, stop it.”

“Come on, just one more!”

Lydia laughed, but she still smiled and held the baby up so Dean could take another picture. It had to be maybe the hundredth he took, but Dean didn’t care. It was the first day of his daughter in this world, and he was going to document every second of it if he could.

“Oh, what would people say if they saw you now?” Lydia joked. “The great Dean Winchester, Stanford’s most notorious party animal, brought to his knees by a chick.”

“You said the same thing when we got married,” he reminded her. “I didn’t care then, I don’t care now.”

The baby stirred in her sleep and let out a weak whimper. Dean felt a rush of panic going down his spine, but Lydia simply propped her up in her arm and moved aside the hospital gurney that covered her breasts. The baby connected her little mouth to her nipple and went quiet again.

“There you go,” Lydia said with a smirk. She looked up at her husband and laughed in his face. “Babies cry, Dean. It’s how they communicate with the world.”

“I know that,” Dean replied, hoping the blushing of his cheeks wouldn’t be too notorious. He dragged his chair so he could sit closer to them and watch the baby’s little frown of concentration as she sucked on her lunch. “Oh, aren’t you just the prettiest thing, little Rosemary.”

Lydia grimaced and turned her face away, but Dean caught her.

“What? What’s the matter?”

“I don’t… I don’t think that should be her name,” Lydia explained.

“Are you kidding me?” Dean huffed. “We spent months on this. We went through a dozen baby name books. We agreed on Rosemary because you said just calling her ‘Mary’ felt wrong, and then you got mad when I got mad at you for it.”

“I know,” Lydia sighed. “But that was all before she got here. And now she is… and be honest, she doesn’t look like a Rosemary.”

Dean stared at their daughter’s face, who had finished eating and was dozing off happily again.

“Maybe she doesn’t because she hadn’t got the time to be a Rosemary,” he insisted. “She’ll grow into the name.”

Lydia didn’t seem convince. She stared at her like with her lips crooked to one side, in the gesture of concentration Dean had seen on her when she cooked a difficult dish or when she calculated the house’s expenses.

“I like Emma,” she concluded.

“Ok, we haven’t settled on a middle name,” Dean reminded her. “So maybe…”

“Dean, come on, this isn’t one of your business meetings.” Lydia rolled her eyes at him. “Besides, Rosemary Emma? It just doesn’t sound good.”

Dean was about to protest when his cellphone started vibrating over the table. He raised a finger to his wife to indicate the conversation wasn’t over yet, and picked up the call.

“Hey, Daddy.”

“Benny, don’t do that,” Dean protested, but it was hard to be mad at anyone when he was so happy he felt like he could explode. “You’re going to ruin it for me.”

Benny’s laughter thundered on the other side of the line.

“How’s the girls?”

“They’re both fine,” Dean answered, perfectly aware he was smiling like a fool. “Benny, you should see her, she’s so beautiful…”

“I imagined you would say something like that, brotha’. Why don’t you come over by the bar and show us? Cas is here and I’m sure we can lure Sam away from his books for a couple of hours to celebrate he has a new niece.”

The offer was almost too tempting to pass. He looked at Lydia, who was shaking her head almost like she had already guessed the topic of the conversation.

“Go,” she said. “We’re not going to do anything interesting here other than sleeping a lot.”

“You’re the best,” Dean whispered, before he returned to the phone. “Benny? I’ll see you in an hour.”

“Gotcha. Bye, Daddy.”

Dean was going to have a severe talk with him about that. He slipped his phone into his pocket and sat by his wife once more to smile at her.

“I’m going to have my cell on all night,” he promised. “And tomorrow morning, I’m going to come back and take you and little _Rosemary_ home, okay?”

“Okay.” Lydia chuckled. “Hey, I love you.”

“I know.”

Dean leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. He looked over his shoulder once more when he was at the door. Lydia held one of the baby’s little hands up and waved it at him, and he left the hospital with the warmth feeling in his chest that for once, everything was right with the world.

Maybe that’s why it hit him so bad when everything went wrong in a second.

 

* * *

 

“No, but, but… you haven’t really looked at her,” Dean insisted, practically shoving his phone in Sam’s face. “Look at her, she looks _just_ like mom.”

“Okay, dude, whatever you said,” Sam sighed. “She’s literally not even a day old, how can she look like anybody?”

“I think she’s very pretty,” Castiel intervened. “Congratulations, Dean.”

“Thank you!” Dean exclaimed. “That’s all you need to say, see? Cas is a better brother than you are.”

“Oh, come on!” Sam complained. “I’m happy for you, okay? I am! I’m just really tired and stressed out ‘cause the bar exam is next week and…”

“Well, that has an easy solution,” Benny said. “Waitress, another round!”

They must have been in their fourth or fifth whiskey and talking about the good times they’d had. Later, he wouldn’t even remember what they talked about, except that they did so for two hours straight and laughed themselves to tears repeatedly. They must have looked complete deranged to outside observers, but they couldn’t care less. Dean’s head was lighter, but he still felt the same warmth in his chest he’d had when he’d held his daughter against him for the first time. And he was certain that, no matter what great times he’d had in the past, the best of his life had only just started that day.

Of course he didn’t say that out loud, lest he’d be accused of having turned into a sap. And they all knew the sap of the group had always been and continued to be Castiel.

“Boy, I can’t have another one,” Benny said, shaking his head. “Andrea’s gonna nag me so much when I get home. Like, I don’t even want to go right now. Can I crash in your couch, Dean?”

“No way,” Dean said. “Lydia’s going to get furious. I don’t even want to be around her when she gets like that, and she’s the mother of my child.”

“Right, because you haven’t drove… driven that point home already,” Sam muttered before sinking his head in his folded arms.

“Well, I am gonna go home to Meg,” Castiel slurred and attempted to stand up, but it took him a couple of attempts until he was firm on his feet. “Because I love her. That’s why I married her.”

Maximum sap.

“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, dude,” Dean laughed. “You remember you married the embodiment of evil, right? Your wife’s a demon!”

Castiel didn’t even attempt to deny it. He half-heartedly waved his hands at them, stumbled upon a couple of tables and assured everybody that tried to help him that he was okay before he reached the door. It was as if somebody had poked Sam with a needle, because he stood up immediately and looked around.

“He’s not… he’s not going to drive, is he? He can’t… you know he’s a lousy drinker…”

“It’s fine,” Benny said and jingled Castiel’s keys in front of them. “But for reals, this was nice but I gotta go now.”

“Okay.” Dean stood up and let his friend wrapped his arms around him. “Hey, come visit us next week. Bring the missus.”

“Of course,” Benny laughed. “She would literally rip my head off if we don’t go to meet your kid. Bye, Sam.”

Sam, who had hidden his face again, raised a hand in such a pathetic way that it couldn’t even be called a wave.

“Come on, you Sasquatch,” Dean said, grabbing him by the arm and attempting to pull him up. “Time to go home for us too.”

“I hate you,” Sam muttered.

“Ah, come on. You used to be a happy drunk,” Dean commented, as he half pushed, half dragged the monster he had for a brother towards the door. It was not an easy task because, goddammit, when had his little brother turned into this giant of a man? “Remember that time you got drunk in high school and sneaked back in and Dad caught you?”

That made Sam giggle and a couple of girls that were coming their way crossed the street. Dean couldn’t blame them, they might seem pretty bad. And maybe he was drunker than he thought, because he felt the impulse to shout at them that he was happily married with a kid. Or maybe it was just that he wanted an excuse to scream that from the rooftops.

“I… I vomited all over his shoes,” Sam remembered.

“Dude, he was furious,” Dean said. “Like, terrifying furious.”

His voice trailed off. They usually tried to avoid talking about their father’s anger, because it was a very uncomfortable topic, and suddenly Dean regretted he brought it up on a night like that, where everything was supposed to be happiness and hope for the future.

“Hey… hey, hey.” Sam tried to stand up straight, but he kept leaning either too close or so far that Dean had to grab him by the coat to prevent him from collapsing on the floor. Finally, Sam clasped his hands over Dean’s shoulder and looked up, blinking as little as he could in his state. “Hey… you don’t… go there, okay? You’re going to be… so much better than he was. You’re going to be awesome.”

“Yeah?” Dean didn’t know if he should laugh or cry and, oh, God, he was so much drunker than he had thought, because suddenly he was getting all choked up and teary-eyed. “How do you know?”

“You did awesome with me.”

And maybe Sam wasn’t aware what he was saying. Maybe he didn’t know exactly the effect of his words on Dean, because this was one of those things they just didn’t talk about and never acknowledge out loud. But still, it was amazing to hear it. Reassuring. Like, if his little brother had faith that Dean could be an okay dad, he had no reason to doubt himself.

“Okay. Let’s get you to the couch.”

They made it to the front yard of Dean’s house before they had to sit down. The calm, suburban street was spinning around them and they’d caught the giggles once more. Dean was pretty sure that if any neighbor was poking out of the window right then and saw those two overgrown men sitting on the wet grass on a chilly January night and laughing their asses off at nothing in particular, he would be shunned and shamed for the rest of the eighteen years he planned to live there until Rosemary went to college and he and Lydia could move to an empty-nester condo.

That if they didn’t have more kids afterwards. He would definitely ask her about it in a year or two.

Sam’s cellphone was ringing inside his pants and it took him two or three attempts to press the answer button.

“Yeah… oh, hi, Jess… yeah, we had a couple of drinks… I’m at Dean’s. Yeah, we’ll pick you up in the morning so you can meet the baby. Totally. I love you too, I love you so much, you have no idea… okay, bye.”

Dean laughed in his brother’s face.

“Whipped.”

“Says the suburban dad.” Sam stuck his tongue out at him and looked down at his phone with a little smirk in his lips. He leaned against the fence and stared up at the sky before confessing: “I’m going to propose.”

Dean’s alcohol-soaked brain didn’t register the weight of his brother’s words immediately. Maybe that’s why he mumbled like an idiot:

“You’re gonna what now?”

“Propose,” Sam repeated. The idiot beam from his face remained exactly where it was. “If I pass the bar exam, I’ll have a good job and I can give her everything she wants… like you gave to Lydia. So I’m gonna ask her. I already bought the ring.”

“Woah,” Dean muttered, because he hadn’t had that kind of forethought. He and Lydia were already living together when one day, while they were doing the dishes, he’d sort of blurted out that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

“Are you asking me to marry you?” she’d laughed.

Dean hadn’t really meant that, but then again, maybe he had.

“Yeah,” he’d said, still trying to play it as if was her who was coming up with the idea and he was just sort of half-heartedly going along with it. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

Lydia’s face had turned serious all of the sudden.

“For real?”

“Yeah,” Dean had replied, a little more confident this time, because now the idea was out there, it was definitely growing on him. “Yeah, let’s do that. Let’s get married.”

She’d stared at him incredulous for a while, and then she’d burst out laughing, a charming laughter Dean hoped their daughter would inherit.

“Just like every girl wants to be proposed,” she’d said. “While she’s elbow deep in soap and wearing slippers.”

Dean later would realized he probably should have got on one knee and gave her a ring or taken her to a fancy restaurant before he asked. But back then, his dumb man brain had only registered that as her saying yes and he had been too busy feeling over the moon to grovel at his own clumsiness.

That had been three years ago. They were both turning thirty that year, they had bought that beautiful house that now Rosemary would turn into a home and this time next year they would be going to Sam and Jess’ wedding. Life had reached its peak for all of them.

“Who would have thought?” Dean commented, to no one in particular. “The Winchester brothers, having their lives together. It has to be some sort of miracle.”

“Nah,” Sam said. His eyes were fluttering close, and unless Dean moved him fast, he was probably going to fall asleep right there, but he still manage to say his next phrase clearly: “I always knew we would make it.”

“Brave words.” Dean rolled his eyes, but the smile on his face was genuine.

After taking off Sam’s shoes and covering him with a blanket, he climbed upstairs without stumbling with his own feet even once. He felt a strange sense of pride while looking at himself in the bathroom’s mirror.

“Enjoy tonight,” he told his reflection. “It’s the last time you’ll sleep for eight hours straight in a long while.”

He grinned, satisfied with that idea, and flailed down on the bed without even bothering to undress.

 

* * *

 

The phone woke him up at four in the morning. Its blaring beeping drilled into Dean’s head, and for one disorienting moment, one moment Dean would come to wish had lasted forever, he almost waited to hear Lydia’s voice begging him to turn it off. But the bed was empty except for him, and the phone was somewhere on the floor. He couldn’t remember throwing it there, but he must have.

It felt strange to move, like the air around him had been replaced by a thick substance that delayed every one of his movements. Like he was swimming in jelly. The image made him chuckle as he fell on all fours (because like hell he was standing up) and crawled towards his phone. But the moment it was in his hand, it stopped ringing, so Dean just laid down his heavy head on the carpet, ready to fall asleep right there again because the idea of swimming in the jelly back to the bed just exhausted him.

He got about two seconds of peace before the phone began ringing again. This time he made the effort to open his eyes and find the answer button.

“Hello?”

“Am I speaking to Mr. Winchester?”

“Depends who’s asking.”

He didn’t know why he made that joke. He must have been half drunk still. It wasn’t even funny. And the voice on the other end sounded dead serious:

“Mr. Winchester, I’m calling from St. John’s Hospital…”

The sudden rush of panic that went through his brain was more than enough to wake him up.

“What? Why? What happened? Is there anything wrong? Did something happened to my daughter?”

“No, Mr. Winchester, your baby is fine,” the voice said, but they didn’t give him time to feel relief: “It’s you wife, sir…”

The voice kept speaking, but Dean wasn’t listening. It was like there had been a loud thunder, a strenuous sound that irrevocably separated his life in two.

 

* * *

 

A blood clot.

Dean spent the next few days reading everything he could get his hands on blood clots. Because it had been that, a little ball of plaques forming in Lydia’s veins that had taken her away from him. The doctors said the nurses didn’t notice anything unusual. Lydia’s vitals were fine when they last checked on her. She was sleeping and so was the baby, but a few hours later, when she started crying and the nurses walked in to see what was going on…

Her heart had stopped. They had tried to bring her back, but it was already too late. There was nothing they could do, there was nothing anyone could have done. They had hammered that point home over and over: no one could have predicted, women who had just given birth had a higher chance of getting a clot, it had just… happened.

Dean had wanted to scream until he was blue in the face that it wasn’t true. That he could have stayed with her, that he would have noticed if something was wrong, that he could have called the nurses and the doctors and get her help much sooner. And Lydia would be there. And their daughter would still have a mother.

Instead, he had stared into the void while the doctor explained it to him. He might have come out as cold because he hadn’t cried, but that was because he simply couldn’t. He felt the tears swelling up in his chest and burning up in his eyes, but he just couldn’t bring himself to let them out. It was like there were two men inside of him, one poor bastard that wanted nothing but to drop to the ground and let all the grief flow from him in torrents of tears and another that just knew he couldn’t do that. There was just… so much that he had to do. He had to take the baby home, he had to call Lydia’s mother, he had to prepare the funeral… he had to… he had to…

“Dean.”

Sam’s voice called him from a million miles away. Dean blinked and came back to the reality, an awful reality he wanted no part in anymore.

“Dean, are you ready?”

His brother looked strange in the black suit, bigger than usual. Maybe it was because he was making an effort to stand up straight, maybe because he didn’t have that usual boyish smile in his face but a worried, solemn gesture instead. On the contrary, Jess looked tinier than she was in her dress, like she had shrunken just by wearing it.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked, touching his forearm.

That alone was enough to get Dean teary again, but he took a deep breath and nodded. He knew it was okay to cry, he knew it would be better for him if he _did_. But again, there was so much he had to do. He had to stand on the front row of the pews next to Madeleine. He had to listen to the priest talk about Lydia and her tragic, unexpected loss. He had to stand in the cemetery among the crowns of flowers as they lowered her casket. He had to contain the impulse not to shout at them to stop, not to jump into the grave with it and open to check her one last time, because it had to be a mistake. His Lydia couldn’t just be gone forever. She couldn’t be.

But there was no mistake. In the hospital, he had touched her hand, kissed her forehead and the cold contact of her skin against his lips had been confirmation enough. Lydia was no longer in that pale, limp carcass they were putting on the ground. Lydia wasn’t there.

He was, though. And he had to tend to all the people who had come to express their condolences and to say goodbye to Lydia. He thought he saw Benny, Andrea, Castiel and Meg among the faces that came over to shake his hand or hug him, but he was so focused on the baby being comfortable that later he only remembered very few things about that afternoon.

One of them was his mother-in-law. Madeleine sat on their couch, surrounded by all of Lydia’s cousins. She looked at the photograph of her daughter over the coffee table, a photo that Dean had taken. It showed Lydia beautiful and happy, smiling for the camera against a blue sky. He remembered that day. It had been when they’d discovered she was pregnant and went to the park to celebrate it. Had it only been a few months ago? It felt like a lifetime.

Madeleine was crying. She hid her face on a tissue that was too wet and twisted to absorb anything else and muffled her whimpers on it, like even in a situation like that she was ashamed of showing such weakness. It was a such a strange sight: Lydia always joked she came from a family of Amazons, all women who had lost or divorced their husbands and had more daughters in turn, and they were all strong and happy like that. Dean always had the impression she was right: Madeleine never seemed to smile and even on their wedding day it was like she had to force her lips upwards to give something resembling one when she'd come to congratulate them. She was always practical and distant, and Dean hadn't thought she'd be capable of ever shedding a tear. Lydia's aunts and cousins were the same, hardened women with very little time for nonsense or sensitivities.

But now the Amazons were all crying and it was almost heartbreaking to watch them hold each other and wipe their tears only to have more sliding down their cheeks a few seconds later. It was even more heartbreaking because Dean wished he could join them, he wished he could sit by Madeleine's side and hold her hand and cry with her. He would tell her he was sorry, he was so sorry he couldn't be there for Lydia; that he wished he could have done more.

They'd never liked each other: Madeleine thought her daughter was too good for him, and Dean didn't understand how someone as stuck-up and cold could raise someone as happy and wonderful as Lydia. But now it didn't matter. It didn't seem to matter at all, all their petty fights over Thanksgiving, all her sly digs at him, none of it mattered. It mattered that they had both lost Lydia. It mattered that the pain they were feeling was the same and that they needed to be strong and together so the baby could have a family despite it all.

But he didn't go sit with her and he didn't tell her those things. Instead, he stood around and accepted the condolences of neighbors and old college classmates who looked very confused. Like none of them had thought they could die and now they were being confronted by the fact they could be ripped from that life at any given second.

Dean couldn't blame them for not knowing what to react or what to say. He was still functioning by instinct, by classifying all the things he had to do in urgent and less urgent, by going through the motions until everything that had to be done was done.

What would happen afterwards... Dean didn't know and he didn't want to think about it. For now it was just a matter of keeping it together, keeping it going, keep assuring everybody that he would call them and tell them if he needed anything, even though he probably wouldn't.

Lisa Braden brought him a casserole of stew.

"I'm really sorry for your loss," she said, as she placed it on Dean's hand. "She was always so nice. I just can't believe what happened."

"Thank you," Dean said. He didn't say that she was the twelfth person to present him with homemade cooking as way to express condolences, and that he had more food than he would be able to eat. Babies didn't have teeth, so he was the only one who would be eating all of that...

The thought was depressing. Dean excused himself to the kitchen with the excuse of putting the stew away.

Jess was checking on the baby, who slept peacefully in her chair over the counter, unaware of all the grief and pain around her.

"Hey," she said, raising her head when Dean walked in. "Another one?"

"At least I won't be living on take-out in the foreseeable future," Dean commented, as he moved some things around inside the fridge to make space for Lisa's stew. "How is she?"

"She's been sleeping for hours," Jess informed him. "Maybe we should wake her up? I've read that babies get restless at night if you let them have too many naps during the day."

Dean had read something like that, too. He and Lydia had read all the books in preparation for this; they had agreed they would discuss all those details like bedtime and turns in changing diapers when the time came. But now it was him calling the shots. He looked at the baby's peaceful face, her chest rising up and down very slowly, and decided it would be cruel to take her away from wherever she was at that moment. He too wished he could be sleeping, or better yet, that he could wake up and find out Lydia was there by his side like every morning.

"Let her," he said. "I'll deal with her later."

Jess didn't look convinced, but she tucked the baby a little tighter and in moving her hands, Dean noticed a strange glimmer.

"What's that?"

Jess grabbed her hand, as if she wanted to hide the ring from Dean. A futile attempt, since the thing was huge. Dean must have been completely out of it not to have noticed it before.

"Sam asked me to marry him last night," Jess confessed, looking down at her shoes. "He said he didn't want to wait any longer."

It was almost like she was apologizing. Like she didn't have the right to have good news or be happy because Dean was going through such a hard time.

“Hey, that’s amazing,” Dean said, sincerely. "Congratulations. Come here."

He hugged Jess very tight, to let her know it was okay. Just because he was miserable it didn't mean that everyone else had to be.

"Thank you," she said. Her voice was broken, like she was holding back the tears. "I told Sam we should wait out. I didn't want him to ask me because he was scared over what happened to Lydia, but he said he had made up his mind a long time ago..."

"I know," Dean said. They wanted to be respectful, after all. He broke the hug and forced a smile for Jess. "I'm very happy for you guys. Really."

Jess sighed with relief and awkwardly placed one of her locks behind her ear.

"We're here for you, you know," she assured him. "Anything you need, anything at all..."

"Thank you," Dean said. The baby let out a tiny whimper, and Dean wondered how long she had been awake. He picked her up from her chair and held her close to his chest. "You heard that, baby girl? You're going to have the best aunt ever."

Jess chuckled at that, and all her worries about what Dean would think seemed to vanish in thin air. And that was the second thing he remembered clearly from that afternoon.

The Amazons immediately fussed over the baby when he came out of the kitchen with her. Two of Lydia's aunts picked her up from his arms and proceeded to demonstrate how to hold her correctly. Madeleine, who had was apparently finished crying, lifted her head and beckoned to them. Her eyes were bloodshot and the line of her mouth looked thinner and harder than ever, but she still managed a smirk when they placed the baby in her lap. She picked her up to look at her little face.

"There now," she told her. "You're going to be strong and beautiful just like your mom, aren't you?"

The baby looked at her with wide, confused eyes. Madeleine kissed her in the forehead, and then looked at Dean. Maybe he was imagining things, but he could have sworn that she nodded at him, as if she was deeming him worthy of taking care of her granddaughter. He figured that was the closest thing he would ever get to a compliment on her part.

People didn't stay too late. Perhaps they saw that Dean was tired (he imagined it must have been pretty clear from the dark circle under his eyes), perhaps they figured the baby needed rest. Whatever the case, one by one, neighbors and relatives said their goodbyes, until only Sam, Jess and Madeleine were left to help him clean up.

His mother-in-law cornered him by the door. Her face was still impassible, but she looked different somehow. He realized her eyes were still bloodshot and her black hair, usually so well kept, seemed a lot messier. There were a few grey strands in it, and Dean wondered if it was because she hadn't had the time to dye it.

“Dean,” she said, in the terse tone she usually spoke to him. So maybe she was shaken, but she was still the same, unmovable Madeleine he knew all too well.

“Madeleine,” he replied.

Madeleine lowered her eyes to the chair where the baby rested and then back at Dean. She put a hand on his shoulder, rigidly, like she had to force herself to do it.

“I’m sorry.”

It was almost like she was spiting the words, like she was forcing herself to recognize she wasn’t the only one who had to deal with Lydia’s loss, and it was costing her every ounce of pride she had in her body. Dean appreciated it nonetheless.

“I’m sorry, too,” he said. “I wish…”

He stopped and shook his head. It was too much, too personal to share with her, even in a moment like that.

“I hope you know, I’m here for whatever my granddaughter needs,” she added. “But… I don’t want to say this right now, but should any harm come to you…”

Dean hadn’t even thought about that. He hadn’t even considered it. Perhaps Madeleine saw something that he didn’t, like his complete inability to cope without Lydia, or that he would be tired and distracted and stumble down the stairs. Something, anything, and he could leave his newborn daughter alone in the world. The sense of fragility, that the fabric of reality could come undone at any second, returned in full force, and a shiver went down Dean’s spine.

“I know it’s hard to think about,” Madeleine continued. “But perhaps you should make arrangements, make sure she has something to fall back on. Now, I could take her in, but I’m not a young woman. My sisters or any of my nieces would be very glad to…”

“How about my brother?” Dean asked. Because if there was one person in the world he would trust with the most valuable thing to him, that would be Sam.

Madeleine hesitated, like she hadn’t even considered the option.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she said, when her silence was prolonged for too long. “Sam does seem like a good, hardworking man. Perhaps too hardworking. I can’t imagine he could dedicate the attention necessary…”

“He’s marrying Jess,” Dean spouted.

Madeleine seemed to believe a woman (any woman) was much more apt to care for the baby, because she muttered:

“Oh. That’s okay, then.”

They had never agreed on anything as easily as they had now. Dean reckoned Lydia would be laughing at them both. Madeleine’s sisters seemed to have some sort of sixth sense, because they knew exactly when they’d finished talking. They came over, kissed Dean on the cheek while expressing their condolences once more and then took Madeleine away. He imagined they were going to mourn Lydia in their own special way, and that he wasn’t allowed to participate in those rituals.

"Are you sure you don't want us to stay?" Jess asked for about the fifth time. Sam had their coats in his arm, but he wasn't making any attempt at putting his on or offering Jess hers. "Because we don't mind squeezing on the couch, really. We'll just..."

"Jess, I'll be fine," Dean promised them. "I'll just put her to bed and go to sleep. It's... it's been a long day."

Jess didn't believe him. She turned to look at Sam, but his brother knew when it was best to just back off.

"Okay," he muttered. He hugged Dean very tight and for a very long time, and patted his cheek when they broke away. "I'll call you tomorrow."

Dean didn't answer, lest his skepticism would be obvious in his voice. He just wasn't convinced there was going to be a tomorrow. A part of him (the part that had wanted to curl up and cover his ears while the doctor was speaking to him, the part that had wanted to jump in the grave with Lydia) was convinced that he would be stuck in that silent, empty moment from then on end. The sky was black outside, and there was no moon or stars over their little suburban neighborhood; the neighborhood that was supposed to be of the three of them, but now they were only two. And he just couldn't wrap it around his head that the sun would come out the following morning. It just didn't seem right.

He didn't get to see the sun go up. The baby woke him up much earlier.

"Lydia, why is there a cat in our room?" he asked out loud.

Then he woke up, and the horrible reality that Lydia wasn't there to laugh at his joke fell on his head like a ton of bricks.

But their daughter was crying on the baby monitor and he had to get up, he had to move, he had to see what was wrong.

"Hey, hey," he muttered as he entered her room and stumbled towards the crib. "I'm here."

She was waving her little feet in the air and her face was red, and for one terrifying, irrational second, he had the impression she wasn't breathing. In fact, she was only gaining strength to let out an even louder scream that pierced Dean’s half-asleep brain like a drill.

He picked her up and unwrapped her from her blanket, which wasn't easy because she was writhing and fussing and all around not willing to collaborate. The diaper seemed dry, but he pulled it away to check anyway. She was clean, so that wasn't the problem.

"What's the matter?" he asked her. "Are you hungry? You shouldn't be hungry, you drank all your formula..."

The baby didn't seem to care much about the proper nutritional values she was supposed to ingest, because she cried out again, at the top of her lungs, like she was decided to find out just how loud she could be with those things.

"Right," Dean muttered. "Right, okay, let's go."

He kept rocking her and shushing her while he struggled to put the water over the oven with one hand. It wasn't easy, but every time he tried to put her down, she started crying all over again and he had to stop what he was doing to calm her down. He spilled powr all over the counter and it took several agonizing minutes until the bottle was ready. He hoped it wasn't too hot because there was no way he could maneuver to try it, but it didn't matter. He couldn't trust his senses in the state he was in.

The baby sucked it for a couple of seconds, but then she let go of it so suddenly a bit was spilled on the floor. She continued screaming and shaking her head.

"Well, what do you want then?" Dean asked, frustrated.

Immediately, he froze. What if she cried because she was sick? He put a hand against her forehead, but he couldn't tell if she was feverish or not. Where the hell was the thermometer?

He managed to take her upstairs, but she seemed as interested in taking the thermometer in her mouth as she been in the bottle. However, by that point, Dean was pretty certain that he had just left his paranoia carry him away. The books said that healthy babies cried. It was when she was silent that he had to be worried.

So, she wasn't soiled, she wasn't hungry and she (most likely) wasn't sick.

"What is it?" he asked again to the now sobbing baby. "Were you just lonely, was that it? You couldn't sleep?"

The baby's answer was to bury her little face in his neck and continuing to cry. Dean took a deep breath and started pacing around the room, hoping the movement would calm her down. Almost without realizing, he started singing.

_Hey, Jude, don't make it bad_

_Take a sad song and make it better_

_Remember to let her into your heart_

_Then you can start to make it better..._

His mother used to sing him that song. She didn't like lullabies. He wondered what kind of lullabies Lydia would have sung for their baby. He would never know.

_Hey Jude, don't be afraid_

_You were made to go out and get her_

_The minute you let her under your skin_

_Then you begin to make it better…_

And what was even worse, their daughter would never know. She wouldn’t have any memories at all from her mother. She wouldn’t remember her laughter or her voice or her hair…

_And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain_

_Don't carry the world upon your shoulders_

_For well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool_

_By making his world a little colder…_

The baby had stopped crying, but now it was him who had his eyes wet with tears. He looked down at her little sleepy face and forced a smile. She couldn’t see him, but he had the feeling he would have to start doing that more and more often as time went by, so she would learn how to. So she wouldn't see him being miserable. So she wouldn't have to carry his grief the way he had carried his father's.

He sat down next to the crib and held her tight against his chest.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “It’s going to be okay. I’m here. Daddy’s here, Emma.”


	2. Chapter 2

Sam didn’t know what he was expecting when he rang the bell of his brother’s house, but it was definitely not that. Dean was an orderly person: he liked everything in his home to have a place and he detested dirt and unkemptness. So when Dean came to the door with a beard he’d probably grown over several days, deep dark circles under his eyes and t-shirt stained with vomit, it was a bit of a shock for his younger brother.

But Dean still managed to smile despite it all.

“Hey, Sammy!” he said. He opened his arms like he was about to hug him, but then looked down at his shirt and changed his mind. He let out a dry chuckle and stepped aside so Sam could come in. “Sorry. I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I told you I was coming,” Sam reminded him.

“Really? Was I awake at the time?”

Sam couldn’t really answer to that question. Whenever he spoke to Dean those days, he did sound like he was drifting off or about to pass out. He slurred his words and yawned in Sam's ear while assuring him everything was okay.

And Sam knew that was Dean’s code for being in dire need of help.

He stepped on a squeaky toy and looked around the living room with a grimace. It smelled fine and it didn’t seem to be anything that was dirty or dangerous, but the place was a mess: there were toys and bottles everywhere, books tossed around the room opened and with folded pages, a half-packed baby bag on the table and a pillow and a couple of blankets on the couch.

Sam took immediate notice of that. Dean hadn’t been sleeping in his bed.

“Hey, Emma, look who’s here!” Dean said walking towards the rocking chair installed on he carpet. “It’s Uncle Sammy. You remember him?”

Emma tilted her head. She had grown a lot bigger since the last time Sam had seen her, just a few weeks ago. She was donning nothing but her diapers and a shirt that read “Rockin’ Baby”, which was more than appropriate for the heat wave they were suffering through, and it was only the end of March. There was a soft blonde fuzz growing over her previously bald little head. Not enough to give her any hairstyle, but Dean had put a pink bow on it anyway. She stared up at them with big green eyes at the same time he chew on the tentacles of a stuffed octopus.

“Emma, not Mr. Eight!” Dean said, as he opened the playpen’s door. Immediately, Emma threw the octopus away and stretched her hands towards her dad. “Yeah, okay. Let’s say hi to your uncle, come on.” He picked her up and turned towards Sam with a big smile. “You wanna hold her?”

“Umh…” Sam looked at the vomit on Dean’s shirt, and then at his own black, impeccable suit.

“Don’t worry, she’s already fed,” Dean said, sensing his brother’s hesitation.

Before Sam could politely decline, Dean handed the baby to him, and then, from somewhere in the depths of his pockets, he extracted a phone and snapped a picture. Sam doubted very much either of them looked good, but Dean hummed happily at the results.

“This one’s going into the Facebook album, definitely,” he determined.

“You have a Facebook album?” Sam cringed. That was definitely odd: Dean hated technology with the passion of a cranky old man. He insisted it was a crutch people used instead of talking to each other.

“Oh, yeah, and you haven’t liked any of the pictures,” Dean accused him.

“Yeah, I really hadn’t had time to check it,” Sam said. He was going to add something about being busy with work, but then her niece started fidgeting with a lock of his hair and he had to prevent from getting it into her mouth.

“Madeleine calls me in hysterics if I don’t upload a daily report on Emma,” Dean explained, mindlessly leaving the octopus on the coffee table. “I don’t mind. She’s too pretty,” he added, pointing a finger at Emma. Immediately, the baby wrapped her little hand around it and sucked it. Dean had a little smirk and softness in his eyes Sam had never seen before, and even a blind man could have seen how in love with his daughter he was. “You’re going to break all the boys’ hearts. Or girls’. Hey, I’d be the last person to judge you.”

Emma obviously wasn’t thinking about girls or boys. Instead, she was trying to get away from that giant man who was carrying her and getting back to her dad’s arms.

“Hey, you want something to drink?” Dean asked, suddenly remembering he was supposed to be playing host instead of awing over his daughter. “I got… I think I still have coffee.”

The kitchen was in an even worse state than the living room: suspicious stains all over the counter, empty boxes of takeaway and microwave ramen, and that was another thing that made Sam cringe. Dean liked to cook, he liked homemade meals. He wouldn’t touch those things with a ten foot pole, but now it seemed that was the only thing he had been eating for several days in a row, and not even bothering to throw away the containers.

“Dean…” Sam started, but Dean was already turning the coffeemaker on.

He opened his cupboards and looked confused for a second, before he realized all his mugs and dishes were piled up in precarious balance on the dishwasher, along with some casseroles and pots and pans that actually belonged to all the neighbors. In fact, the only things that were spotless were Emma’s bottles, perfectly lined up and ready to be filled with formula the moment she was hungry again.

“Right, give me a second,” Dean begged as he opened the water tap. “Kiddo’s been keeping me occupied, so the place’s a bit of a mess.”

“Yeah, I’d say that’s understatement,” Sam replied, still trying to get Emma to stay still so he could have a conversation with his brother, but she was wriggling and shaking her head so hard it was hard to find words while she was just doing everything in her power to escape. “Dean…”

“It’s been a little bit hectic,” Dean said, still trying to sound happy and positive about everything. “You know I don’t remember the last time I slept an entire night? Also, I had a falling out with Emma’s pediatrician. She kept insisting I was paranoid and that nothing was wrong with Emma and when she said I could call her anytime, she didn’t mean at three thirty in the morning when there was nothing wrong with Emma… guess she was kind of right for being annoyed.”

He chuckled and Sam decided he couldn’t take it anymore.

“Dean.” He stretched his hand and grabbed his brother’s shoulder. “Stop. Just… stop.”

Dean blinked at him, like he had suddenly lost the ability to understand English.

“You don’t want coffee?”

“It’s not the coffee,” Sam said. “It’s you. Look at you, you’re a disaster.”

“Well, yeah, you’re supposed to be a disaster when you’re caring for a three months old baby,” Dean replied, and Sam couldn’t deny that was inherently true. But still he didn’t think his brother should be this much of a disaster.

“How many hours have you been awake?” he asked. “When was the last time you ate decently?”

Dean got defensive, because of course he did.

“Hey, cut me some slack,” he said. “I’ve been doing what I can and Emma’s fine…”

“I know Emma’s fine,” Sam replied, even though said Emma was still trying with all his might to get away from him, and at the tone of her voices, she also started whimpering. “I know you’re doing everything for her, but what are you doing for yourself?”

Dean practically ripped the baby from his arm. “We’re fine,” he insisted, although it was obvious he was too tired to put much of a fight against what Sam had to say. "We really are. You don't have to worry about us, Sammy."

"I do have to worry," Sam said. "You're my family. That's what family does, remember?"

"Come on, man, don't quote me to me," Dean said, sulkily, and walked out of the kitchen as if that would stop the conversation altogether.

Sam strode up towards him and planted himself right in front of Dean, giving his brother no choice but to halt unless he wanted to crash baby and all into him.

"When are you going back to work?"

"Dunno," Dean groaned. "Mr. Adler has given me some time and I think I've used up all my sick days. I would have to check. What does it matter?"

"It matters because you need money, Dean," Sam pointed. "You invested most of your savings in this house, and even with Lydia's life insurance... you did talk to the insurance company, didn't you?"

"Nope, haven't really gone around to," Dean replied with a yawn. He put Emma down on the couch, grabbed her little arms and pulled her up only to let her back down slowly.

"Dean, you need to do that. You can't keep postponing... what are you doing?"

Indifferent to the argument her dad and her uncle were having, Emma smiled every time Dean pulled her up with a silly noise, and then let her fall down back on the couch.

"Tummy time," Dean explained, crossing his eyes and sticking his tongue out. "It's to strengthen the muscles of her tummy, see? So she can learn to sit up on her own."

Sam tried not to get himself distracted by how insanely cute his niece was being right now. There were some serious thing he needed to discuss with his brother.

"Dean, seriously," he said, pushing the armchair closer to the couch and sitting down so Dean couldn't avoid his eye. "What are you going to do when you get back to work?"

Dean didn't answer. He kept helping Emma work on her abs, as if he had no intention to even acknowledge what Sam was trying to ask him.

"Dean... you're going back to work, right?"

Instead of saying anything, Dean lowered his mouth and blew a raspberry on Emma's tummy. The baby's toothless smile grew wider, and she made a cooing sound that could become a proper laughter with time.

"Dean!"

Dean huffed and realized that the next step would be Sam locking him up in a closet or literally cornering him until he said something.

"I don't know," he confessed. "It's too many hours, and I need to be home for Emma."

"Are you listening to yourself right now?" Sam asked, scandalized. "You love your job, you spent years licking Adler's boots so he would give you the position you have now..."

"And there are things more important than money," Dean replied. He picked up the baby as if to illustrate his point. "I'm the only one Emma has, I can't just leave her!"

Sam realized he was getting nowhere with that logic, so he decided to change tactics.

"And that's fine; she _should_ be your priority. But you do need money to protect her. Think about it: you need to pay the house's mortgage so she can keep living in this nice neighborhood, you need to pay for her food and her clothes, and down the line, you're going to have to pay for her education. You need to think about the future, Dean. You're not going to be around forever, so you need to plan ahead for Emma."

Dean puckered his lips. It was clear as day he didn't like what Sam was telling him, but he couldn't deny it was truth. Sam kept pushing:

"And it's not true that Emma only has you. She has Madeleine, she has Lydia's family. She has me and Jess. We're here for her and for you. You know that, right?"

"Yeah, I know that," Dean admitted reluctantly. He looked down at Emma and for a second, his feeble mask of happiness and energy came down and Sam could see just how tired and sad he was. "It's just... it's hard."

"I know it is."

With all the time Dean had been investing in Emma, it was safe to say he hadn't even dedicated a second to properly mourn Lydia, to acknowledge the fact he was suffering because of her loss and cry a little. That was the natural, healthy thing to do, but Dean had the habit to put everyone else's needs before his. It had been like that when they were children, it had been like that when Lydia had been pregnant and it was like that now with Emma. It was one of his brother's best virtues, but also a form of self-destruction, because while Emma was doing fine right now, it was going to be a lot harder to keep her going that way when his father was passing out from exhaustion and malnourishment.

And Dean was too proud to admit he needed help. If Sam even suggested he thought Dean should talk to a therapist or a grief counselor or something like that, he was probably going to kick him out of the house and refuse to take his calls for the next few weeks. He was already pretty sure that was going to be the case with what he said next:

"Have you thought about getting Emma to a daycare?"

Dean's eyes glimmered with anger, but luckily for Sam, he was still too tired to get himself carried away by it.

"Are you joking? She's only three months old!"

"There are some daycares that take them as young as ninety days," Sam pointed out. "And some are really good. They have specialized people..."

"No way," Dean cut him off. "I am not abandoning my daughter..."

"It's not abandoning her!"

“… with complete strangers, in a place she doesn’t know. It could terrify her!”

“She’s… she’s still too young,” Sam pointed out. “I hardly think she will notice.”

“She notices whenever I leave the room.”

“No, she doesn’t.” Sam rolled his eyes, pretty certain his brother was being slightly paranoid about the entire deal.

Instead of answering, Dean put Emma in Sam’s hands again and walked towards the kitchen. Sam stared at the baby, almost expecting her to do absolutely nothing. But Emma just stared up at him with wide eyes, and he swore he could see the realization dawning on her that it wasn’t her dad who was holding her. Her lower lip started trembling, and before Sam could say anything or call for Dean, his niece open her little mouth wide… and let out an acute screech that seemed to come from the very vowels of hell.

“Dean!” Sam called out, trying to hold the struggling baby at arm’s length.

Dean came back out and took Emma, rocking her back and forwards until her screaming stopped. He didn’t say a word, but his crooked eyebrow transmitted a clear ‘ _What did I tell you?_ ’ message.

“Yeah, have you considered that is because you are the only person she spends time with?” Sam said, unwilling to let the topic slide until Dean had made a wise decision of some sort, crying baby or not. “That can’t be healthy. She needs to socialize.”

“She does socialize,” Dean insisted. “We go to the park. Sometimes. When I’m not too tired.”

Sam deduced they had gone to the park at least one time, perhaps two at the most.

“Okay, fine,” Dean conceded with a frustrated sigh. “But I’m not _abandoning_ her in a daycare. They put sleeping pills in the babies’ formula to get them to be quiet.”

“That was one daycare, ages ago, and the owners got arrested,” Sam argued, but he was starting to realize logic wasn’t going to win him this one. “Alright, maybe not a daycare then. But how about a sitter? Someone to look after her while you’re at work? That way Emma can stay here, at the home she knows, and you’ll know there’ll be someone to give her their full attention.”

Dean hesitated, and for a moment, Sam was sure he was going to bring up some babysitter that had been caught hitting the kids they were supposed to care for or something like that. But apparently, that idea sat better with him than the daycare one.

“Maybe it could work,” he admitted begrudgingly.

Sam would have argued it had to work, for the sake of Dean’s working life, but he refrained. He had already got further than he had imagined.

 

* * *

 

Of course, Sam should have known that if Dean was going to get a sitter, it wasn’t going to be as simple as hiring the first girl the agency sent.

“These are the characteristics we’re looking for,” he said, passing sheets of paper among his friends, as they sat in the table and observed him as if they had collectively decided Dean had lost his mind. “We want her to be sweet, kind, patient, attentive and caring. You’re going to give them a score from one to ten in each one of these categories, and then we’re going to add it all up and the potential nanny with the highest score gets hired. Any questions?”

Castiel raised his hand.

“In the scale from one to ten, ten is the highest score, yes?”

Sam sank his head in his hand while Benny looked at the papers like he couldn’t figure out what was written in them.

“How are we supposed to evaluate these things?” Jess asked, obviously as baffled as anyone else. “Do we ask them questions about themselves or…? Won’t that be too invasive?”

“Why are we here?” Meg complained, throwing the papers on the table with a huff. “No, seriously, Clarence, why am I here? I don’t like Dean and I don’t like babies.”

“Right back at you,” Dean replied, and looked down at the baby backpack hanging from his chest where Emma was resting. “We don’t like the mean evil witch, do we?”

“You said you needed at least two female opinions,” Castiel reminded him. “And Andrea couldn’t come…”

“No, I said Andrea _wouldn’t_ come,” Benny corrected him. “She said she thought the whole thing was bananas and that Dean should just go with his gut.”

Meg glared at Castiel, clearly hinting that should have been her husband’s first reaction upon being invited to help Dean choose a babysitter.

“Well, it was either this or going to my cousin’s first communion mass,” Castiel said. “And you said literally anything was preferable to that.”

Apparently Meg stood by that opinion, because she quickly grabbed the pen Dean was offering her.

“Bring them in.”

Dean had asked four of the persons the agency suggested to come at the house, and Sam figured at least he’d done some pre-screening so the ones coming in wouldn’t be too bad.

He was wrong and it was the last time he left his half-asleep, badly-fed brother call the shots on the future of his niece.

The first candidate was Rowena, a redheaded Scottish middle-aged woman with a pointy nose and a smile that sent shivers down everyone’s backs.

“I have been trying to reconnect with my motherly side lately,” she said when asked why she wanted the job. “You see, I was a forest child for a very long time, and so, when I had my son, we didn't exactly get along in his teenage and adult years. But I must have done something right, because now he has his own business, see?”

“What exactly do you mean by forest child?” Jess asked, because no one else really dared to.

“Oh, just, you know, I never adhered to traditional religions very well.” Rowena shrugged. “I am a very independent woman, so naturally I was drawn to more… liberal forms of adoration of the great big nature we’re all a part of. I do believe babies need all the sunlight they can get. You have to let them roll around in the fields so they can suck in as much pure air as they can…”

“Yeah, I’m sorry, my daughter’s not a plant,” Dean interrupted her.

Rowena’s smile grew a little tense at that quip. They all decided that while it wasn’t a good idea to discriminate on someone based on their religion, maybe Dean would be calmer with someone with a more hands-on approach to taking care of Emma.

Which was the reason the following girl was also discarded.

“I am a writer,” Becky told them, shifting nervously in her seat. “Well, I haven’t had anything published yet, but my boyfriend says I got a lot of potential and I can’t give up. In the meantime, I have to pay the bills somehow.”

“What do you write?” Benny asked.

“Well… romantic novels… oriented to a female public…” Becky said. They all got the impression she wasn’t being entirely honest about it, and later Meg outright stated that she probably wrote porn. “I’m actually working on my second novel right now, which is why I need an easy job…”

“You think taking care of a baby is an easy job?” Dean asked, crooking an eyebrow while Castiel wrote something down in the papers (so far, he had been the only one taking notes).

“Well, yeah.” Becky shrugged. “You feed them, you change their diapers and you put them to sleep, right?”

“Actually, no,” Dean said, a clear irritation creeping in his tone of voice. “Babies need to be stimulated, they need you to play with them, talk to them, keep them engaged…”

“Oh,” Becky muttered, as she hadn’t expected Dean to want her to do all of that. “Well, I don’t know how much of that I can do while keeping my current word count rate…”

Sam had to walk Becky to the door and assure her repeatedly that Dean didn’t really think she should never, ever be left alone with a child, that he said things like that because he hadn’t eaten. The poor girl was at the edge of tears.

“What…? You’re blaming me?” Dean said, raising his hands defensively when his brother returned and glared at him. “Come on, she would have turned the TV on and let Emma just watch it until her little brain rot so she could write in peace!”

“You judge people too harshly,” Sam told him. “You have to give them a chance if you want to find someone.”

“Actually I don’t think she would have been the right choice,” Castiel intervened. “I gave her a three in the caring score.”

“Go fish,” said Meg. She, Jess and Benny had found a stack of cards somewhere and were now playing and completely ignoring them.

They ordered a couple of pizzas and Sam prayed to all the gods he’d ever heard of that Dean wouldn’t be so cranky by the time the third girl arrived.

And Ava seemed like a good enough choice. She was punctual, polite, she assured them she loved babies and answered all of Dean’s invasive questions with a big smile on her face. All around she seemed to be the best of the people they had interviewed that day… right up until Meg came out of the kitchen with some beers and recognized her.

“Hey… aren't you…?”

In Meg’s credit, her nurse instincts kicked in and her voice trailed off before she said anything that would be considered confidential… but that didn’t stop Ava from getting really nervous all of the sudden. She started shifting in the chair and wriggling her hands and saying weird things along the lines of:

“It’s not… it’s not really a problem, you know? And I wouldn’t have to be obligated to disclose it…”

“Disclose what?” Dean asked, frowning.

“My psychological condition!” Ava replied in a very high pitch tone. “That’s why she’s here, isn’t she?”

“It’s actually my day off,” Meg commented, under her breath.

“Whatever!” Ava screamed, her face getting red and her eyes filling up with tears. “The doctor says that if I take my medication the voices shouldn’t be a problem!”

Dean put a hand around Emma’s little head. In his mind, _A Hand That Rocks the Cradle_ -like movie was already rolling.

“She can’t actually sue me for not hiring her, can she?” he asked, half an hour later, when they got Ava to stop crying and leave the house.

“Well, since she volunteered the information and had a panic attack during the interview, I say we’re covered,” Sam said. “Great job you did with her, by the way.”

“Whatever,” Meg said, looking at her cards. “I don’t appreciate having to spend my free day calming down psychiatric patients. Like I do every other single day of my life.”

“God only knows how is it that you keep that job,” Dean muttered. “I go insane just for being in the same room with you.”

Meg glared at him from above her hand of cards, but she probably shouldn’t have, since Benny beamed wide and displayed a book of aces on the table.

“I win,” he announced happily.

Meg threw her cards on the table with a huff of frustration while Jess narrowed her eyes at him with suspicion.

“That’s the third game in a row!” she exclaimed. “You’re cheating!”

So while the three of them had a very ardent discussion about who had tried to cheat or not, Sam, Castiel and Dean went to the kitchen to feed Emma. Not that it was a three men job; they just had things to discuss.

“Well, despite her poor first impression, I believe Becky to be your best option,” Castiel commented, looking down at his charts. Sam had no idea when he had found the time and the data to make charts, but there they were, in blue and black. Probably because those were the only pen colors available to him.

“Yeah, forget it,” Dean said, as he let a few drops of formula fall in his forearm. “I am not leaving my daughter with hipster girl.”

“Better than the witch or the girl with a genuine mental condition,” Sam said. He absentmindedly bounced Emma on his leg while he spoke, and the baby seemed to be enjoying herself, because she got fuzzy every time he stopped without realizing. “Maybe girl number four will be the lucky one.”

“You can forget about her,” Dean sighed. “She texted me early, said she can’t make it. So, we’re back to square one.” He picked Emma up and stuck the bottle in her mouth as he sat down on the tool in front of the kitchen island with his brother and his friend. “And I talked to Zachariah. He said I’m back to work next week or not come back to work at all. Don’t say it,” he threatened Sam.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Sam assured him, and his brother shot him a look of skepticism. “Although you have to admit that if you had started searching earlier…”

“I said, don’t say it,” Dean groaned. “Hey, Cas, you’re a Catholic. You know if daycares run by nuns are any good?”

The question was probably only half serious, but Sam knew that the fact he was asking meant he was reaching some sort of threshold of desperation. Castiel looked very concerned.

“Well, I would say there are plenty of confessional schools and pre-schools that have high levels of education,” he explained. “Some of them, however, take the ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ proverb rather… literally.”

Dean put a hand on Emma’s head protectively again.

“Is that even legal?” he asked, with genuine fear growing in his eyes. “They wouldn’t… would they?”

Sam could see him panicking, so he leaned over to touch him in the arm to derail those thoughts.

“Dean, come on. Cas was probably joking, wasn’t he?”

“Yes… joking,” Castiel replied, with more hesitation that was needed.

“You can totally find a daycare center that’s good for Emma if you put your mind to it,” Sam continued.

“Yeah,” Dean sighed and looked down at Emma, who was smiling around her now half empty bottle. “Or I could take her to work with me. Mandy from Accounting took her twins with her every day for months.”

“And how did that work out for Mandy from Accounting?”

“She… got fired after one of the kids drew in a very important report,” Dean admitted begrudgingly. “But you would never do that, would you?” he asked, setting the bottle aside and holding Emma against his shoulder. “No, you wouldn’t.”

Emma’s replied was a very loud burp. Sam couldn’t hold a chuckle and even Castiel, who was usually very nervous around babies, smirked a little.

“Here’s a suggestion,” Jess said from the kitchen’s doorway. The three of them raised their heads at her, wondering how long had she been standing there. “How about you forget about the entire thing and come play cards with us?”

“I can’t forget about the entire business!” Dean protested. “This is about Emma, I need to find a solution…”

“You have been stressing out forever,” Jess pointed out. “I actually think this is the first time in months we see you.”

She didn’t say “since the funeral”, but the words floated around in the air, pretty much implied. Dean looked down at his daughter like he was searching for an excuse, but Jess didn’t let him get to it:

“Just come hang out with us. You can worry about the babysitter situation later. And besides, if you don’t come, Meg will say it’s because you’re scared you’ll lose to her.”

“She does have a point,” Sam said.

“Yes, Meg would say that,” Castiel agreed, although that wasn’t the point Sam was talking about.

Dean bit back a laughter, and suddenly, he realized how bless Emma and him were to have all those people there for her.

“Well, I can’t let Meg insult my honor like that, can I?” he said, standing up. “Come on, Emma. Let’s beat her at her own game.”

Emma cooed like the idea excited her.

 

* * *

 

Three hours and several pizzas later, Dean was feeling… something he hadn’t felt since Lydia had passed. It wasn’t happiness, exactly, but a sense of elated giddiness. He had been either stuck in his own head or worrying about Emma all that time he hadn’t even stopped to consider how stressful that had made him. And now, for the first time in a long time, he had laughed until his belly hurt when Benny accused Emma of being the cause of the ending of his winning streak, he had a great time talking to his friends about movies and TV shows he totally needed to catch up on (because, who had time to check the Netflix queue with a baby to take care of?) and even thought Meg spoiled the season finale of _Game of Thrones_ for him, he still had a great time, like he hadn’t in a while.

After Castiel, Meg and Benny all left… well, Sam and Jess stayed to help him clean up. Because of course they did.

“No, let me handle her, come on,” Jess insisted when Dean said he needed to change Emma and put her to sleep. “Please? You have a drink with Sam, and I’ll take care of her for fifteen minutes, okay?”

She did look pretty good with the baby in her arms. And of course Sam’s eyes lit up and a stupid happy grin appear in his face upon seeing that picture. But he still managed to unstick his eyes from the spectacle enough to drag Dean to the kitchen and open a beer for him.

“How you doing?”

“Excellent,” Dean lied through his teeth. “Yeah, I’m perfectly fine.”

Of course Sam was too smart to fall for that bullshit. He waited while Dean taped his finger on the bottle.

“I miss her,” he concluded. It was almost as if he was embarrassed to admit it, as if he was supposed to take it in stride the fact the woman he loved had passed and stay strong and never let his guard down.

“I know you do.” Sam put a hand over his forearm and smiled at him, encouraging. “It’s okay.”

“Is it, really?” Dean asked, cringing. “Sometimes it feels like nothing’s ever going to be okay again. Like, I’m trying but…”

“Dean, it’s okay,” Sam insisted. “You’re supposed to feel that way. You’re supposed to be sad. You’re not a robot. You’re my brother. And you don’t have to do it alone, see? You have me, and Jess, and Cas and Benny. I think even Meg pities you a little.”

“Yeah, right,” Dean chuckled, but he did look a lot calmer. “Thanks, little brother.”

Sam still thought suggesting a grief counselor would be going a step too far, but he was glad at least Dean had come to accept the help that was being offered to him.

“You’ll call if you need anything, won’t you?” Jess insisted when Dean hugged her goodbye.

“Of course,” Dean promised. “You crazy kids don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“Well, that leaves a wide margin of error,” Sam commented.

Dean stuck his tongue out at him, because he didn’t want to call him a bitch in front of Emma. Sam rolled his eyes at him and Jess laughed. And for one, small moment, it felt like maybe everything would be alright after all.

He stood on the door with Emma and made her wave her little arm until Sam and Jess’ car got lost in the distance. The moments its lights disappeared around the corner, all the exhaustion Dean had been fending off for the afternoon fell on top of his head. He closed the door with a deep sigh and collapsed on the couch, with the familiar weight of Emma’s little head stuck comfortably underneath his chin.

“Do you mind if I close my eyes for a second?” he asked, sitting her in his knee. “Or are you still too fussy to sleep?”

Emma responded by looking at him with wide, wakeful eyes. So he figured he had his answer.

“Where do you get all that energy?” he asked, starting to move his knee so Emma could ride it like a horse. “Aren’t babies supposed to like, sleep all the time?”

Emma cooed and smiled. An actual, full blown smile, and the burning in Dean’s chest every time she did that returned. Goddammit, he was becoming an old sentimental sap, but he figured he had a right to.

“How would you like a long, warm bath?” he proposed. “And then can read or sing until you finally fall asleep and let me get some rest. I’m not asking for much, am I?”

Emma smiled again. He had the distinctive impression she was promising him that was just not going to happen. At all. He would have to be awake and play with her until she was too tired.

“Work with me here,” he begged her. “I need my four hours!”

The doorbell rang, startling him. He stood up, giving him a full two seconds to put on his normal human being façade instead of the hot mess he was and stood up to open with Emma in arms.

“Hey, what is it?” he asked. “Did you forget something…?”

The blonde girl standing in his porch looked up, looking every bit like a deer in the headlights for a second. Then, slowly, a happy grin extended across her face.

“Hi!” she greeted him with such an upbeat tone of voice Dean had the distinctive impression that girl had never known sorrow in her life. “I’m not late for the interview, am I?”


	3. Chapter 3

“Yes,” Dean said, not entirely sure if he should walk out and see if his friends weren’t hiding in the bushes waiting to prank him. “Yes, you _are_ late.”

“Of course.” She laughed, scratched the back of her head and started talking really fast: “I told my mom that, you know? I was sure you had already found someone else and there was no point in showing up at all, but she was like: ‘Joanna Beth, if you pass up this opportunity for a job I’ll drag you to college myself and make you tell your professors you changed your mind about dropping out!’ And you know, that wouldn’t have been pretty. I’m sure my professors wouldn’t have liked that…”

“Yeah,” Dean said, cooking an eyebrow. “It’s kind of awkward when people show up at your doorstep like that.”

“Right?” Joanna Beth put her hands in the air as if Dean had just confirmed her point. “Anyway, sorry to bother you. Cute baby, by the way. I’m just gonna… get out of your hair now.”

She turned around and strode away towards the fence.

“Wait.”

Dean didn’t know why he called for her to come back. Perhaps because she had been up front about her issues without him having to poke her for them. Perhaps because her face when he had first opened the door still linger in his mind, and he couldn’t help but to wonder: what had she been so scared of? What she had thought he was going to say to her?

Or perhaps because she had been the only one, all day, who had even bothered to look at Emma.

Joanna stopped in the middle of the garden and looked over her shoulder. She seemed surprise when Dean beckoned her to come closer.

“You sure? I kind of showed up hours late…”

“I know that,” Dean said. “I’m also kind of desperate, so get in and let’s do this now.”

“O… kay.”

She was tiny, was the first thought that crossed Dean’s mind. Or maybe he was so used to dealing with giants like Sam and Benny and girls who wore vertiginous heels like Meg and Jess that his sense of proportions was completely fucked up. Joanna was wearing sneakers and jeans, along with a red hoodie that was a couple of sizes too big for her. It probably belonged to a boyfriend or a brother.

“So, uh, Joanna…”

“Jo,” she corrected him. “I’m only Joanna if you’re my mother and I did something to piss you off. Which is… most of the time.”

She cringed and let out an uncomfortable laugh, almost as if that was a private joke that Dean wasn’t supposed to get, so he didn’t even attempt to. He pointed at the chair in front of the couch that he hadn’t even bothered to put away after the interviews were a buzz.

“Jo,” he started over once they were sitting face to face. “Tell me about yourself. Why do you want this job?”

“Honestly? Well, I already let it slip that I recently dropped out of college,” she pointed out. “I’m kind of taking some time to figure out what I want to do now, but in the meantime my mom refuses to let me live at home for free, so… I need the money. I grew up babysitting the children at our apartment complex before she bought the bar, so this is familiar territory.”

“Why don’t you work at your mom’s bar?”

“And spend six to eight hours with her glaring at me and reminding me I’m going nowhere fast every day? I don’t think so.”

Dean could understand that. His dad hadn’t always been the easiest guy to get along with, but usually his spats were with Sam. He couldn’t count the times he’d taken his little brother out just to defuse the tension. He almost hadn’t gone to college because of it, fearing they would pretty much kill each other if left alone to their devices.

“Okay, well I appreciate you telling me the truth,” he said, but before he could continue, she said:

“Do you mind if I ask you something? Why do you need a babysitter at all?” she asked, looking around the house. “You seem well off. You could afford a daycare.”

Dean blinked at her, trying to contain the impulse to scream that he would set something on fire if he heard the word “daycare” one more time.

At least she hadn’t point blank asked him about Emma’s mom.

“Because here, in my house, I can put cameras and spy on you if I think there’s something iffy going on.”

He was only half-joking.

“Fair enough,” Jo accepted. She stretched her arms and looked confused when Dean didn’t know what she was trying to do. “Are you going to let me carry her? To see if we get along? We’ll be working closely, after all…”

She spoke as if she already thought she had got the job. Dean, who had interviewed thousands of potential interns for the company before being promoted to a charge where he didn’t have to do that, knew that trick all too well. He still appreciated she came so well prepared.

He extended the baby towards her and Jo took her in her arms delicately.

“What’s her name?”

“Emma.”

“Hello, Emma,” she told her, holding her head little head up so they could speak face to face. “I hope we can be friends.”

She made a silly face, crossing her eyes and sticking her tongue out and Emma cooed like she did when she liked something. Even before she tried to hand him the baby back, Dean had already made a decision about Jo.

“So do you think you can get here in time Monday morning?”

 

* * *

 

There were a few things going for this work that Jo would have to be too ungrateful not to appreciate. The fact the baby was so small and didn’t know how to walk yet completely minimized the possibility of her grabbing something she shouldn’t and setting the curtains on fire (That had happened _one time_ , but Ellen just wouldn’t let her forget about it). The pay was decent enough that (Dean would even cover the gas price), the house was in a nice neighborhood and it took up most of the day because Dean apparently worked long hours. So she wouldn’t have to stay at home with Ellen reminding her of how much a disappointment she was.

And then there were the cons: it took Ellen two entire minutes to realize she had taken the job because it would keep her out of the house for most of the day.

“Are you trying to avoid something, girl?”

“You were the one who told me to get a job or get out,” Jo reminded her, doing everything in her power not to start screaming incoherencies. On second thought, she should have known another session of drop-out-shaming was in store when her mother asked her to help her unpack the alcohol. On third thought, neither of them should have been entrusted with sharp objects.

“I meant a job that would give you some practical experience in the world,” Ellen explained, without even looking from the bottles she was lining up on the shelf. “Something that would lead you to finding out what you want to do.”

“I either work or I think about what I want to do,” Jo replied. “I can’t do both.”

This time, Ellen did look at her, only with that little gesture she got when she didn’t think Jo was being funny or cute, the one where she clenched her jaw and narrowed her eyes. That look had been known to scare off potential dates and unruly costumers more effectively than any shotgun.

And Jo knew for a fact Ellen kept an actual shotgun underneath the cash register. So she went quiet and continued cutting open the boxes and picking the bottles out like a good girl.

“Don’t try to be smart with me,” Ellen groaned, and immediately changed to her second favorite one: distrusting anyone and everyone around Jo. “You sure this guy’s straight?”

“Well, there were pictures of his wife in the house, but he could bi,” Jo said. Her mother gave her one last warning glare and Jo decided she had pushed her luck enough for that day. Or that week. “He’s widower, he has a demanding job, he won’t even be around the house to try and have his way with me if that is what you’re worried about. It’ll be just me and the baby. All day. Really, mother, this is not a high quality job anyone should envy me for.”

“Well, I’m just glad you got a job at all,” Ellen concluded. “No thanks to your scumbag boyfriend, I might add.”

“Ex,” Jo corrected him. She sank the knife on the box again and move it to the side, imagining it was Aaron’s face.

“Knew the kind he was from the moment he walked in.”

“Then you should have kept quiet,” Jo commented. “If you haven’t told me exactly that, I wouldn’t have felt compelled to date him just to prove you wrong.”

“If you didn’t feel compelled to do exactly the opposite of what I tell, then your life wouldn’t be such a mess.”

“Give credit where credit is due, though,” Jo said. “Aaron would’ve been a scumbag whether you sized him up or not.”

Ellen opened her mouth and then closed it again and Jo as glad they could finally agree on something. That didn’t happen too often those days.

Another con was that it was an hour and a half drive to Dean’s home. Jo wouldn’t have minded (she did love to have any excuse to take the old Beetle from the garage) if Dean hadn’t expected her to be at the house at eight o’clock, sharp. That meant she had to wake at six and order an extra-large coffee in the first shop she passed by. Her mother was right (Jo hated herself a little every time she found herself thinking that), her disorderly life had impaired her from keeping the same hours as normal people. Well, she thought as she stomped on the accelerator, at least this would help her get in touch with the rest of the mortals.

_Well, shake it up, baby, now (Shake it up, baby)_

_Twist and shout (Twist and shout)_

_C'mon c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, baby, now (Come on baby)_

_Come on and work it on out (Work it on out)_

Jo smiled and turned the volume way up, both to keep awake and to sing along:

_You know you twist your little girl (Twist, little girl)_

_You know you twist so fine (Twist so fine)_

_Come on and twist a little closer, now (Twist a little closer)_

_And let me know that you're mine (Let me know you're mine)_

It worked: she arrived at Dean’s house five minutes before eight, fully awake with caffeine pulsating in her veins and her feet ready to dance to a classic rock and roll song. That was probably not part of the job requirement, but she was ready for whatever nonetheless.

Well, that was up until the point Dean opened the door wearing a striped dress shirt and suspenders. Jo was aware her new boss was an attractive man because she had two functioning eyes, but she wasn’t prepared for that. The result was that she stood on the doorstep completely awestruck for three entire seconds and she must look like her mind had short-circuited. Which it had, to be completely honest.

“Hey,” he greeted her, his green eyes darting directly into hers while he rocked the baby on his arms. “So you _can_ arrive on time.”

Jo blinked and tried to remember how to use her big girl words.

“Absolutely!” she said, smiling wide. “The other day was an oddity that will not happen again. From now on, I am Mrs. Punctuality.”

That had been so lame Jo didn’t know how the earth didn’t opened up and swallowed her.

Dean, however, seemed a bit amused. “Well, come on in, Mrs. Punctuality. I’ll give you the war briefing.”

He wasn’t joking. It started logical enough: the amount of formula Emma took, at what time she was usually fed, her naps, her favorite toys, basic stuff. But then he started getting… specific.

“If she throws her pacifier anywhere, you have to boil it before you give it back to her, okay? Washing it with tap water just isn’t enough to eliminate the germs. Same goes for the bottles. Don’t let her watch TV, the colors and the sounds can have an impairment in the developing of her attention span. There’s appropriate books on the second shelf if you want to do something with her. And make sure you wipe her little butt twice and there’s cream for diaper rash in…”

“Okay, hold on,” she interrupted him. “I know how to change a diaper.”

“Yes, I’m not saying you don’t!” Dean said. “I’m just telling you Emma’s skin is very delicate, so you have to be very careful with it…”

Somehow Jo got the feeling that arguing that every baby in the world had delicate skin wouldn’t really be a convincing argument for Dean. He kept walking around the house, pointing all the corners that were baby-proofed and recommending her to double check them if Emma happened to crash against them while crawling. Jo promised she would, although she was pretty certain the guarantee of those things assured them they could resist some crashing. And besides, how far could a four months old baby crawl anyway? Didn't that take another couple of months at least? She guessed she shouldn't be surprised Dean had jumped the gun on that.

By the time Dean finished with all of his recommendations, it was eight thirty.

“Don’t you have to go to work?”

“Yes,” Dean said, looking nervously at the clock. “Starting tomorrow you can come around this hour. I won’t have to repeat all of this again, will I?”

“No, of course not,” Jo assured him, even though she had already forgotten half of the hundreds of little things she was supposed to be on top of. “Don’t worry, everything will be under control here.”

“Of course,” he said, but he still looked a little bit apprehensive, like he wasn’t entirely sure that was the truth. “Well, I guess I’ll be on my way.”

“Okay,” Jo said. Dean didn’t move from his spot, so she decided to help him a little bit. She stretched her hands towards him and only then he seemed to realize he was still carrying Emma.

“Right.” He chuckled awkwardly. He lifted her up to leave a kiss on her forehead, and then slowly, as if it physically pained him to get separated from her, he put her on Jo’s arms. He closed and opened his fist several times, almost as if he didn’t know what to do without the weight of the baby on his hands.

“It’s going to be fine,” Jo assured him.

“I know, I know it will be,” he said. He still remained rooted on his spot.

“Do you want to take a picture of me so you can have some sort of identification if you come home to find I’ve kidnapped your baby?” she offered.

She was only joking. She didn’t expect him to actually whip out the phone from his pocket.

“That’s a great idea, yes. Say ‘cheese’”.

“Okay,” Jo said, biting back the comment about paranoia she had at the tip of her tongue. She lifted Emma up so they would both be in the picture and smiled. She was pretty sure Dean took more than one picture, varying the angle just slightly.

“Sorry,” Dean sighed in the end. “I just… it’s the first time I’m going to leave Emma with someone other than me. I’m a little nervous.”

“Would I help if I text you pictures of her every hour in the hour?” Jo asked.

“No, of course not, you don’t have to do that,” Dean said. He fidgeted with his fingers a little more. “Every two hours will be fine.”

“You got it.”

That helped him calm down, at least enough for him to head for the door.

“And don’t forget the cream!”

“I won’t,” Jo assured him, walking behind him because she got the feeling she would have to kick him out at any second to get him to leave.

Dean was already halfway to the gate when turned to give yet another recommendation:

“Oh, and her clothes are on the second drawer in her room. So, you know, if you take her out, make sure to put a coat on her. It’s getting chilly.”

Jo looked at the blue sky and the sun shining down on that perfect spring day, but decided this was past arguing.

“Yes, don’t worry about a thing,” she insisted.

“Okay,” Dean said. He took two more steps towards the car, but then he turned around with a finger up and his mouth open as he had just remembered another thing.

“You’re going to be late!” Jo reminded him.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Dean admitted with a sigh.

Finally, he climbed in his muscle car and made the motor roar to life. Jo stood in the door, making the baby wave her little arm at him until his car finally disappeared around the corner. And then she waited a couple of seconds more, because she wasn’t entirely sure he wouldn’t come back to throw another advice on her.

“Somebody has attachment issues, huh?” she said, kicking the door closed as she walked back in. “Well, Emma, it’s just you and me now. What do you want to do?”

The baby looked up at her (enormous green eyes, the same as Dean’s), and her mouth twisted in a gesture of distress.

“No, come on, I was just kidding,” Jo told her, sitting on the couch with her. “Come on, don’t cry. Your dad will be back at six.”

It might not have been the greatest idea to admit that Dean was actually gone: Emma’s eyes filled with tears and before Jo could come up with another idea on how to calm her down, she let out an ear-piercing scream so loud Jo almost expected the neighbors to show up at the door and demand to know what she was doing to that poor baby.

So that started well.

One thing was for sure: Emma had far more stamina for crying than any baby Jo had ever met. She tried rocking her, singing to her, even attempted to feed her even though it wasn’t her time yet according to what Dean had told her (and left written on a paper on the fridge, because of course he wouldn’t trust Jo to just remember it). Emma kept on crying steadily and every time she seemed like she was going to calm down and gave Jo a little of false hope, she was only gathering strength to start over again.

“Aren’t you exhausted?” she asked her, making her jump on her knee to futile results. “Please, just calm down…” Jo held her against her chest and startled. “Are you always this hot?”

She rushed to the baby’s room, frantically searching for the thermometer. If there was anything at all wrong with the baby, if she so much as sneezed when Dean came back, not only was Jo going to be fired, she had the feeling Dean would kill her and bury her in the backyard.

“Five minutes!” she begged, as she tried to get Emma to take the thermometer in her mouth. “Come on, just five minutes, I need you to be quiet just that long.”

Emma didn’t seem interested in collaborating. At all.

So, out of options and with a growing migraine behind her eyes, Jo turned to desperate measures.

“Hey, mom, do you happen to know any way to take the temperature of a baby?”

“You call me for that? I’m in the middle of the lunch rush!”

“It’s not even ten in the morning,” Jo commented. Although she didn’t know why it surprised her that Ellen was going to mess with her before she offered any kind of solution.

“Pre-lunch rush,” Ellen said, with the same tone she used to say things like ‘ _Don’t question me, young lady_ ’. “Have you tried her butt?”

“She’s not a dog, mom,” Jo groaned.

“Are you even sure she has a fever?”

“I don’t know, because she won’t let me take her temperature,” Jo complained. Meanwhile, Emma kept shaking her head and hiccupping quietly, but Jo had been through this long enough to know she was gathering air to begin screaming again. “Oh, no, Emma, don’t…”

Emma shouted and cried loud enough for Ellen to hear her at the other end of the phone.

“Nah, she’s not sick,” Ellen determined. “Or hungry, or soiled, or anything like that. She’s just upset and throwing a tantrum. Probably misses her dad.”

“How can you tell all that?” Jo asked. To her, all babies’ crying kind of sounded the same.

“You’ll get it when you’re a mother,” Ellen said. That was one of her favorite catchphrases and justifications, but Jo was inclined to believe her this time. “Take her out for a walk or a drive in the car. The movement should help soothe her.”

“You sure that will work?” Jo asked, a little nervous. There were muggers and child kidnappers out there and… how was it possible that Dean’s paranoia was rubbing on her already? She had spent twenty minutes with the guy. “Should I put a jacket on her?”

“Are you crazy? It’s seventy five grades outside!” Ellen pointed. “You can thank your global warming for that.”

“Global warming is not…” Jo tried to argue, but of course Ellen had already hang up. “That’s not how global warming works,” she told to the still tearful Emma.

But she had tried everything else, so she figured she had nothing to lose. Emma tried to put up a fight while she dressed her up and again while she secured her in the stroller, but she settled down when Jo gave her the octopus. At least long enough for Jo to prepare a bag with diapers and bottles, having to stop every few minutes to pick the octopus and handing it back to Emma, because she had found that was a fun game. By the time they took to the streets, Emma was actually too tired to keep on screaming, but she still huffed and puffed and avoided Jo’s eyes when she knelt in front of her to try to make a funny voice with the octopus.

“Okay. Grumpy Baby,” Jo sighed, giving up on trying to engage with her. “Let’s see how you handle being outside of your territory.”

It turned out, as the case was more often than Jo cared to admit, that Ellen was right: Emma settled down and stopped her whimpering as soon as they were outside. And even Jo’s migraine started receding as they rolled down that street of front yards with perfect lawns and pretty houses painted in pretty colors. There were no children on sight, but it wasn’t hard to imagine them playing ball with their dads or having imaginary tea parties with their friends once they came back from school. A nice neighborhood to raise a family.

“Hello?” someone called.

Jo stopped and turned around to see a brunette woman looking up her fence. She was wearing a hat and had pruning shears in her hands.

“Hi,” Jo said, not certain if she had been talking to her.

“Is that Emma Winchester?” the woman asked, coming to the gate quickly.

“Yes, yes she is,” Jo confirmed with a smile, hoping that would stop the woman from thinking she was a baby thief. “I’m her new babysitter. My name’s Jo Harvelle.”

She extended her hand over the fence while keeping eye contact the entire time. The woman narrowed her eyes at her, but she took off her garden gloves and shook her hand.

“Lisa Braeden,” she introduced herself.

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Braeden,” Jo replied. “Do you mind telling us which way to the park?”

“Two more blocks down and then turn to the left,” Lisa said. She was still looking at Jo like she didn’t quite believe her. “I’m sorry, I have to ask: when did you start working?”

“Today, actually,” Jo said. Dammit, did she really look like the kind who would just take a baby and run? Well, she wasn’t too sure how those people looked like, but still. “Dean… uh, Mr. Winchester had to go back to work, and he didn’t want to leave Emma in a daycare, so…”

Lisa Braeden still looked at her with complete mistrust in her eyes and Jo wondered how far away was she from asking her to show an I.D. of some sort.

"Well, I'll best be going then," Jo concluded. "Thank you for the directions. Say bye, Emma."

Emma was too busy sucking on her plush octopus to say anything. Jo strolled away happily, and when she looked over her shoulder, she noticed Lisa Braeden was quickly returning inside her house.

"She's either going to Google me or she's going to call your dad," Jo told the baby. "Or both."

She stopped by a kiosk to buy herself a soda and that day's newspaper. She found a lonely bench in the park and left Emma's stroller next to it. She placed the newspaper with the date visible on top of her and snapped a picture with her phone. She could almost sense the baby glaring at her as she moved the stroller's roof so she could get some sun.

"This is nice, isn't it?'" she commented, after sending the picture to Dean. "Look, there's a sandbox. I'm sure you can play in it when you've learned to sit by yourself. And when you've learned not to eat sand."

Emma didn't find it funny. She continued chewing the octopus and looking around, but the frown in her face started relaxing as more fascinating things entered her line of vision. She seemed particularly enraptured by the rays of sun beaming down amongst the branches and the breeze rustling among the leaves. She pointed at a bird singing close to them and made an interrogative sound at it.

"You're actually kind of cute," Jo commented. "I couldn't tell while you were crying all that time."

Her phone vibrated in her pocket and she picked it up while slowly pushing the stroller back and forwards.

"Hello?"

"So my neighbor just called me to ask about you," Dean said on the other end. "Is there a problem?"

“No, not at all,” Jo promised. “I think she was just trying to be cautious. You know, if you see a stranger walking your neighbor’s baby around, you say something about it.”

“You went for a walk?”

“Yep, we’re in the park now,” Jo said. “Did you see the picture I sent you?”

There was some beeping as Dean pressed the buttons of his phone to see it.

“She’s not wearing a jacket!” he exclaimed, scandalized.

“No, Dean, she’s not,” Jo sighed, tiredly. “That’s because it’s seventy five grades outside and if I put one on her, she’ll have a heat stroke. Baby jackets are cute, but we can’t overdo them. We have global warming to thank for that.”

It was incredibly how many times imitating her mother got people off Jo’s back.

“Yeah, I’m sorry, you’re right, it’s just…” he sighed, like he couldn’t bring himself to finish that thought. “What’s with the newspaper?”

“Well, you know when they abduct someone and they send a proof they’re alive? They make them pose with the newspaper so they know the picture was taken that day and not before,” she explained. And then she realized she had just brought the topic of kidnapping back to the front of Dean’s mind. “I… I saw it on a TV show. I thought it would be funny.”

“Oh, I see. That’s clever,” Dean commented and to her immense relief he chuckled a little. “Hey, listen, I gotta go back to work, but thank you for the picture. And for enduring Lisa’s interrogation.”

“Hey, anything to make you feel better,” Jo said. “I know it’s hard.”

She didn’t say how she knew it was hard and Dean mercifully didn’t ask. He just said he would be seeing her later and hang up.

“Well, how about your dad, huh?” Jo commented. “He was so uptight this morning, I thought he didn’t have a sense of humor, but it seems… Emma?”

She turned the stroller over to see that the baby was fast asleep, but still holding onto her octopus with zealousness.

“Uh, finally,” Jo muttered to herself.

She closed her eyes for a moment and when she opened them again, she realized fifteen minutes had gone by without her noticing it. Maybe she also needed to take a nap with urgency.

 

* * *

 

The rest of the day was pretty tranquil, as Emma had used up all her energy in that morning’s tantrum. She drank her formula without making too much of a fuss about it. She let Jo burp her and change her diaper without fighting and she almost paid attention to her while Jo read her _Green Eggs and Ham_. She might have been too little to understand her, but Jo was of the opinion Dr. Seuss should be part of anyone’s early childhood. And apparently Dean thought it too, because she found several of the books in his library. Some of them looked a little battered and one had the initials “D. W.” and “S. W.” scribbled in crayon at the end. It was actually kind of nice that he had kept his childhood books all that time.

By the time Dean came home, Emma had survived the first day of Jo’s attentions and she hesitated to joke about how much of a triumph she felt that was.

Dean crossed the door, hanged the keys and tossed his portfolio aside. He looked tired, but the second his eyes lay on Emma, they lit up with a happy glimmer that was entirely too cute.

“Hey, baby girl,” he called her and Emma immediately turned her head to him and stretched her little hands at him. “How was your day? I missed you.”

Emma started to make happy coos and buried her little face in Dean’s neck almost immediately. It was pretty clear that despite Jo’s best efforts, she had missed him too.

“Well, I guess I’ll be going,” she said, picking up her bag.

“Yeah,” Dean said. He was so enthralled looking at his baby he almost didn’t notice Jo was already at the door. “Hey, uh… thank you for everything.”

“Glad to be of help,” Jo said, with a smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Right,” Dean sighed, like the mere idea exhausted him. “We’re doing this all over again tomorrow.”

“Minus the war briefing.”

It was nice to see Dean laugh. He seemed like a guy who didn’t always have the time to do that. He walked her to the door and waved at her as she got inside her car.

For a moment, Jo couldn’t bring herself to turn the engine on. She had the feeling she had forgotten to say or to do something. She stayed right where she was, looking through the window of the living room. Dean was sitting on the couch with Emma on her knees, making funny faces at her while the baby tried to touch his face.

It was such a normal picture that she couldn’t help but to feel someone had stabbed her in the heart right there. Why was that? That was a really strange thing and she didn’t want to think about it. She popped the same album she was listening to on her stereo and sang along to the Beatles all the way back home.

 

* * *

_It's been a hard day's night_

_And I've been working like a dog_

_It's been a hard day's night_

_I should be sleeping like a log…_

Emma obediently sucked on the bottle, her big green eyes settled on him without any signs of tiredness.

“Really? Not even a little?” Dean asked, frustrated, before he kept on singing:

_You know I work all day_

_To get you money, to buy you things_

_And it’s worth to hear you say_

_You’re gonna give me everything_

Emma finished her formula, still eyes wide open like she had no urge in the world for going to sleep. Dean sighed and held her against his shoulder as he patted her on the back.

“ _So why on earth should I moan, ‘cause when I_ … woah, that was a big one,” he laughed after the baby let out a burp that should not have been nearly as noisy as it was for a body so small. “Okay, ready for your bath? While we’re on it, why don’t you tell me what you think about Jo? She’s something, huh?”

Emma didn’t offer any opinion on her new babysitter. Instead, she splashed the water around with her hands and tried to chew on her yellow duck while Dean scrubbed her and rinsed her.

“She seems like a nice enough girl, you know?” he commented. “She’s preppy, she’s funny. I like her. How about you?”

Emma looked at him and finally, Dean was rewarded with a single yawn. He wrapped her up in a towel and put her on her onesie with little moons in it. He stood by the crib and sang, moving the bees that hanged above her (a gift from Castiel) while Emma stretched and yawned and rubbed her eyes, doing everything in her power not to lose to the sleepy monster. After some minutes, her eyes fluttered shut and her breathing became deeper and calmer.

Dean still remained rooted to his spot for a few minutes. That day at the office had been hell. Zachariah hadn’t been easy on him because he had lost his wife and had been busy taking care of his newborn daughter, oh, no. The bastard had given him tons of work on top of the already large pile that had accumulated in Dean's desk while he was gone. He had spent half of his lunch break wondering if he should blow everything up and go back home, but that would have been unprofessional. Somehow, he had managed to pull through and there he was. He still had a job, he still had a salary and Emma was alright, sleeping peacefully with her little hands closed into fists.

_So why I love to come home_

_'cause when I get you alone_

_You know I feel okay…_

He placed a kiss on his fingers and pressed the fingers over Emma’s little cheek to not wake her up. He left the door half open (he had a baby monitor, but he didn’t trust it) and crossed the hallway to his own room. He was so tired that night he might fall asleep on that big empty bed alone without thinking about Lydia once. He stretched his hand towards the doorknob…

Emma’s quiet whimpers came from behind him. Dean sighed and came back into the nursery before it turned into a full blown cry. It was going to be one of those nights.


	4. Chapter 4

It took a couple of weeks, but finally Jo got used to the rhythm of her new job. She put together a playlist to listen to in the car on her way over there and a different one to listen to on the way back home. She arrived at the Winchester’s place, listened to Dean’s paranoid ramblings about the latest threat to his baby that he had read about on the Internet until she practically pushed him out of the door and spent the rest of the day finding something to entertain both herself and Emma. Once she stopped crying after her dad left, that was, but Jo was optimistic enough to think the duration of those tantrums diminished by the day.

They went for long walks to the park (no other neighbor stopped her to interrogate her and Lisa Braeden sometimes even smiled and waved at her from behind her fence), they read all the Dr. Seuss’ books that Dean had in his library (Jo made a note to ask him to buy more) and listened to his CDs on the stereo. She was pleased to discover her boss was a Beatles guy as well, although there were other stuff in his music that you wouldn’t think to find in a guy who wore a suit and had high paid job doing… what did Dean even do? She wasn’t sure. Something that paid high enough to get him to buy limited editions and vinyls of Led Zeppelin albums. She also found AC/DC, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Bon Jovi… and Air Supply, strangely enough.

A man of varied tastes, in short. Jo could respect that.

He was also a man who didn’t have time to do his own groceries. When she brought up to him the fact they were running low on formula and diapers, a rushed of panic ran through his eyes.

“Oh. Oh, no. I… I totally forgot, I… dammit, can you stay a little longer tomorrow night, so I can go…? No, you’re right, that’s too much to ask.”

Jo was glad he interpreted her face correctly, but she still felt a little bad for him.

“Why don’t you make a list and I go tomorrow? I would take Emma with me, of course,” she added quickly. “I think she would enjoy it.”

“Are you sure? ‘Cause I know that’s not part of your job description and I don’t want to impose on you…”

“Dean,” Jo interrupted him. “It’s okay.”

Dean didn’t seem convinced, but the following day, he left her a list of the things he needed around the house and some money. Jo wanted to laugh: next to the thing that were obviously for Emma, Dean had written the exact brand and size he wanted. The things that were for him were scribbled at the bottom in a rush, as if he had only later remembered he too needed to eat and use soap when he took a shower.

“We’re going on an excursion!” Jo announced to Emma while the last sobs of her morning tantrum started to grow quieter. “Aren’t you excited? It’s going to be fun!”

Emma glared at her with her usual frown, but Jo strapped her to the stroller and located the nearest grocery store on her phone anyway. To her surprise, Emma seemed to enjoy the place: she kept looking around and reaching for colorful things she saw, when she wasn't whimpering and throwing her octopus away when Jo refused to get them for her.

“She’s a little fussy, huh?” a white-haired woman whose smile was all teeth told her after the third or fourth time Jo had to stop to pick up the stupid plush from the floor.

“She’s having one of those days,” Jo laughed.

She probably should have just smiled and kept going, because now the woman thought she was allowed to come closer, placed her cart in front of Jo, thus blocking the path, and engaged in even further conversation.

“My, she’s so pretty!” she commented, hunching a little to be at Emma’s height. “What’s your name, pretty girl?”

Emma frowned at her, as if she was trying to figure out why that strange woman was talking to her and what exactly was she saying.

“Emma,” Jo said, trying to think of a polite way to keep going. From the few disastrous experiences she’d had working at retail, she knew that old ladies who sounded excessively preppy were the worse when they considered you had been rude to them.

“Hello, Emma!” the old woman greeted her in a voice so high pitch that she was practically shrieking. “How old are you?”

Jo wondered why she kept directing the questions at the baby when it was obvious she was too young to understand them or answer them.

“Four months…”

“Oh, my dear!” the woman exclaimed, finally straightening her back and looking at Jo. “You look so well!”

“Uh… thanks?”

“My daughter in law had her second baby seven months ago,” the woman kept telling her. “And here between us, she really let herself go during the pregnancy. She keeps telling me she’s trying to lose the extra weight, but she can’t find the time and…”

Jo’s face hurt from smiling during that entire diatribe, biting her tongue to avoid shouting that she really didn’t care. At all.

“How did you do it?” the woman asked. “Maybe I can share your secret with her.”

“How did I do what?” Jo asked, panicking for a second that she had been so busy feigning politeness that she had missed a part of the conversation.

“How did you lose weight after she was born?” the woman elaborated. "Because honestly, you look simply stunning..."

"Oh!" Jo exclaimed as it all started dawning on her. "No! I'm sorry, I'm not Emma's mom. I'm just her babysitter."

The woman's smiled vanished instantly. She looked incredibly disappointed that she wouldn't be able to use that chance encounter to fat-shame her daughter-in-law, but Jo found herself still chuckling about it hours later when Dean came back to work. He also found it quite hilarious.

"You don't even look alike," he chuckled.

Jo didn't tell her that at four months old, it was still pretty difficult to tell if the baby really looked like someone or not. Instead, she laughed with him as he walked her to the door and wished her a good weekend.

Ellen didn't find the story quite as funny.

"So, he's got you doing the groceries now too, huh?" she commented, scowling disapprovingly.

"I offered my help, mom," Jo groaned.

"One of these days he's going to have you cleaning the house and making dinner for him. You have to remind him you're only there to take care of the kid, and nothing else. You're not the damn maid."

Jo looked down at her dish with a huff. Suddenly, she was no longer hungry.

"Don't give me that attitude, young lady," Ellen said, as if Jo was still a fourteen year old girl rolling her eyes at her. "I'm just trying to care for you..."

"I can take care of myself, thank you very much," Jo cut her off. "I don't know if you realize this, mom, but I'm twenty-one years old. I can decide for myself..."

"Oh, I see," Ellen cut her off. "Well, if you're Miss So Mature and Independent, why don't you decide getting a job that actually pays enough for you to move out? Or why don't you go back to college to make something of your life? Either way, you'd be out of here and you wouldn't have to listen to me."

Jo was tempted to say that would be a blessing, but as much as it hurt her ego to admit it, Ellen had a point. And in her continued search to prove that she wasn't as immature and petty as her mother made her out to be, she decided not to pick up the gauntlet.

"Permission to go to my room?" she asked instead, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Sure. As soon as you do the dishes."

"Why? You just said yourself I'm not the maid."

And that was as far as her maturity went.

Honestly, she understood her mother was mad at her, but was reminding her she was a failure every day absolutely necessary? Jo already felt pretty bad about the whole thing without Ellen drilling it into her head that she had done a million things wrong. She was well aware of that. She didn't need to keep thinking about it.

And that was why she actually hated the weekends now. Before she dropped out of college, she was miserable during the week, dragging herself from Monday to Friday with increasing despair, and going to whatever party, impromptu road trip or poetry reading she was invited to during the weekend. She wasn't a social butterfly, but she got along with most people and she actually had a couple of good friends back then. And when her friends wanted to be all "responsible" and "study", Jo found herself other people to be entertained with.

That was how she had ended up dating a couple of major assholes. She didn't want to think about them.

In any case, now the thing was the other way around. She suffered all through Saturday and Sunday because Ellen insisted in drilling it into her head that she had made the worst decision of her life and she was stuck in a dead-end job that would amount to nothing in her future. Jo thought about calling her friends from college and going out with them, but that hadn't been any better.

"Jo, you're so smart, you had so much potential," Anna had said, touching her arm with genuine concern while Cassie nodded in agreement. "I'm sure if you came back now, you could catch up in no time. We would help you."

"I... look, guys, it's not that I don't appreciate it, because I do," Jo had said, smiling and trying not to look like she was searching for the nearest tree to hang herself from. "Really, it means a lot knowing that you care. But I just can't go back."

"Why not?"

Jo had avoided the question by ordering another beer.

She guessed she could have explained her reasons to them, tell them she was tired and stressed out and the bridge she passed by every day on her way to classes had started to look more and more tempting. Tell them she didn’t think she could make it and that her break up with Aaron had been the straw that broke the camel’s back and she just needed some time to get her head in order. But when she’d told that to Ellen, she had scoffed and told her people went through worse every day, so why couldn’t she suck it up and keep going? Unless until she graduated. Jo had sighed and decided Ellen wasn’t going to understand and she had no guarantee Anna and Cassie would either.

So it was best to let them think she'd decided to throw her life away because she was irresponsible and self-destructive and not because she was beginning to fear she might have no life to throw away if she kept going the same way.

And that was why she couldn't wait for Monday to arrive: not only it gave her an excuse not to talk to Ellen all day, it also allowed her to run away from those thoughts. She had something to do. She was useful. Emma needed her, and when she didn't (when she was taking a nap, for example), Jo could simply relax and not think about anything. Not think about the past, or the future, or herself.

She had the feeling Dean did something very similar with his job.

"It's actually good to be back," he commented one time when Jo had asked him how his day had went. "Of course, I would love to have fewer hours and spend more time with Emma, but sometimes I'm so busy I don't have time to think..."

His voice trailed off and he looked down at Emma again. Jo had noticed there weren't pictures of her mother around the house. She figured they must have been too painful for Dean to look at.

"Yeah, sometimes it's best not to think."

She didn't realized until much later how bleak that comment had sounded.

But instead of pointing how much of a Debbie Downer she was, Dean smirked a little, like he knew exactly what she meant.

"Yeah. Well, have a good weekend."

Jo figured it would be oversharing to say her weekends hadn't been good in a while, so she just got into her car and drove away to her life. Her messy life that she didn't know how to even begin to put in order.

 

* * *

 

Jo wasn't the only one that had started fearing the weekends.

Friday nights were fine for Dean, because it meant he finally, finally, got to spend some quality time with Emma. On Saturday mornings, he took her out for walks (now that Jo had incorporated it into her routine, Dean didn't want to cut her off), he sang songs to her and pretended to dance with her in his socks in the living room, he read her books and practiced all the exercises to develop her attention and cognitive abilities that he had read about. Basically, he did with Emma what he'd done daily before he had to go back to work.

It was great, he felt great doing it.

But Sundays... Sundays were a completely different beast. The mornings weren't so bad because he got to take another walk with Emma, but as soon as the sun started going down a little, the gloomy thoughts overwhelmed him. He thought about how Emma was growing so fast and how Lydia was missing it all. He uploaded Emma's pictures and wrote little passages of her progress on Facebook so Madeleine and Sam and the handful of friends he had left could learn about it, but it wasn't the same because he didn't get to share it with the most important person.

And Emma had her hair. She had his eyes, but the dark blonde fuzz that grew on her head was Lydia's and Dean swore to himself he was never going to make her cut it for that reason. She was going to be so beautiful one day and he couldn't wait to see what kind of person she would become. Would she stomp her feet and look when she was angry like Lydia did? Would she like to draw little doodles at the edge of her notebook? Would she be an artist, would she be a scientist, would she have her mother's brains?

Because when he thought about himself, Dean didn't think there was much she could get from him. Maybe his hard-working ways and his dedication, but if that made her feel half as exhausted as he did on Fridays, well, he really hoped Emma would also learn how to let go and relax now and then.

That week, for some reason, the Sunday blues caught up to him on Saturday night. Perhaps because it was going to be five months. Five months since Emma had been born and Lydia had died. No, he had to separate those two events. He couldn't mix them. Technically, Emma had been born a day before Lydia died. So that Saturday Emma turned five months old. And that Sunday, it would have been five months since he had lost the love of his life.

He still felt restless enough that he took the baby caller downstairs with him and laid on the couch, hoping to fall asleep.

Perhaps it would have been a lot easier had he not decided to listen to Lydia's Air Supply CD.

_I'm all out of love_

_I'm so lost without you_

_I know you were right_

_Believing for so long..._

He covered his eyes with his arm and mouthed the words into the air, trying to ignore the tears flooding his eyes. He missed her. Goddammit, he missed her so much sometimes it was hard to breathe. If it wasn't for Emma...

The doorbell echoed on the living room. Dean tried to ignore it (his wallowing in grief was more important, really), but then it rang again and then a third time. Whoever it was that came to interrupt him at that freaking hour of the night, they weren't going away. So Dean sat up, wiped his eyes with the back of his hands and turned the music off.

He wasn't sure who he was expecting to find (maybe a well-meaning neighbor that had noticed his lights were still on, maybe an overachieving Girl Scout), but he didn't expect that: Sam, Castiel and Benny were standing on his doorstep, all of them wearing jeans and simply appalling bowling shirts. They all smiled at him like he was supposed to know what the hell was going on.

"The mental hospital is down the street," Dean said, arching an eyebrow at them.

"Hello, Dean." Castiel was the first one to speak, and in typical Castiel fashion, he did so with a very awkward beam. "Are you ready for our night out?"

"I'm sorry, what?"

"We're going bowling," Sam added, and lifted a bag to show it to Dean.

"No, we're not," Dean replied, now completely sure his friends had lost their minds. "Who said we are? You didn't tell me anything about this."

"If we had told ya', brotha', you would've said no," Benny explained with a shrug. "Now get your shirt on and let's go."

"No! Guys, what the hell?" Dean said, starting to get a little irritated now that they weren't seeing the obvious flaw in their brilliant plan. "Who am I supposed to leave Emma with?"

"Well, she should be here any minute," Sam said after checking his clock.

Dean didn't have time to ask who. Jo's yellow Beetle parked right behind Castiel's Lincoln.

"Hey," she greeted them with a little wave and a smile. "Am I late?"

"You're right on time," Sam replied, smiling.

And it was only then that Dean started to realize just how thoroughly thought this ambush actually was.

"You called my babysitter?!"

"You gave me her number." Sam shrugged.

"It was for emergencies!"

"This is an emergency," Benny replied with a straight face.

"We haven't seen you in months, Dean," Castiel pointed out. "We figured you'd be home alone getting depressed so we... I mean... it was Sam's idea," he concluded when he noticed the murderous glare Dean was throwing at him.

He had figured as much, but just because Sam was his little brother and he let him get away with a lot of things, it didn't make Dean like this complete disregard of his personal autonomy any more. He rubbed his temples and tried to find a polite way to tell all these people to get out of his house.

"Look, guys, it's not that I don't appreciate what you're trying to do here, 'cause I do, really..."

"Dean, just come with us."

"It will be fun!" Castiel said, putting way too much enthusiasm in his speech for it be genuine.

"At the very least it'll take you out of your head for a while," Benny said and that was a lot more sincere.

Dean glanced at each one of them, and then at Jo, who was standing on his lawn with her hands in her pockets and looking very awkward from having to witness all that.

"I am really sorry they made you come all the way here," Dean said, because that was the only logical thing to say in view of the circumstances.

"Don't worry about it, I was promised a substantial bonus plus gas money."

"On me, of course," Sam added before Dean could say anything.

"Still, I'm pretty sure Jo has a lot more interesting things to do on a Saturday night..."

"Not really, no," Jo interrupted him. "Wish I had friends like yours, though. Mine just stopped calling after a while. Sorry, that's oversharing."

She made a funny face, as if she hadn't really meant to say that, but Dean thought he detected a pang of sadness underneath her preppy tone. Maybe because he too had used that strategy of saying something completely true and then pretend he had been joking way too many times.

And well, what could he really say to that?

"You guys are the worst."

They didn't seem at all fazed by that assessment.

"So... you're coming?"

"Fine," Dean groaned. "Give me ten minutes."

It wasn't that he had stopped being mad at them for taking him by surprise like that. He realized this plan wasn't as spontaneous as it seemed: Sam surely must have realized what date it was, and even if Castiel and Benny didn't, he was willing to bet it hadn't taken his brother a lot to convince them to go along with it. Jo was right in pointing out his friends were only trying to help, but still...

Dean cracked open the door of Emma's room and peeked inside. The baby was on her crib, sleeping soundly, wrapped up in her blanket, with one of her hands holding onto one of Mr. Eight's tentacles. He waited for a full minute, but Emma didn't wake up crying and gave him an excuse not to go downstairs. In fact, she seemed so peaceful he had to resign himself to the fact it was probably not going to be the end of the world if he just took this one night off his daddy duties.

Hell, he couldn't even argue it was disrespectful to Lydia's memory. The last thing she had done for him was encourage him to go drink with his buddies.

Still, he was going to go, play a few rounds and then convince the guys it was time to go home. And he was going to limit himself to one beer and that was it.

With those newfound resolutions, he climbed down the stair.

"... the bartender asks, _'Say, partner, what didya have to do in Texas?_ '," Jo was saying, imitating a nasal accent quite horribly. "And the cowboy turns around and says: _'I had to walk home_ '."

Benny burst into laughter like that was the funniest thing he had heard in his life, while Sam and Castiel showed uncompromising smiles.

"I warned you it wasn't funny," Jo shrugged from her spot on the couch.

"Don't listen to them, they wouldn't know a good joke if it came out and slit their throats," Dean commented, still a bit bitter about this entire ordeal. He ignored his friends’ glares and walked towards Jo. "She's sleeping, so things should be calm around here. Anyway, the monitor is..."

"Already found it," Jo said, waving it for him to see.

"Right," Dean said. He was ever so glad no one had commented on the pillow and the blankets he had also left by the couch. "Anyway if you get bored, the Netflix password is..."

"I already know it," Jo said.

Dean had to stop to take in that information.

"You do?"

"Oh, yeah, I figured it out the second week I started working here."

"Awesome. We're all set then." Sam stood up and grabbed Dean's arm, thus completely obliterating his last chance of stalling. "Let's move, guys."

"Have fun!" Jo wished them.

On second thought, it wasn't that surprising that Jo had figured it out, Dean thought as he adjusted his seatbelt in Castiel's car. Making it Emma's birthday was a tad obvious.

"She seems like a nice kid," Benny commented.

"Yeah, she has a good head over her shoulders," Sam said. "So glad you found someone to help you."

"Are we gonna go bowling or are we going to sit here and sing Jo's praises?" Dean asked, a little annoyed.

Castiel started chuckling loudly right then.

"He had to walk home because they didn't give him back his horse," he explained when his friends looked at him with a confused frown. "I just understood that now. I have to remember it to tell it to Meg..."

Dean felt the uncontrollable urge to roll his eyes at him. He suppressed it by sighing deeply and looking away.

"Let's just get this over with."

 

* * *

 

The four used to go out a lot back when the four of them were in college - well, technically it had been Benny, Castiel and Dean who did, and then four years later they'd accepted Dean's pain in the ass little brother as part of the group because the Winchesters were a two for one deal. If they liked one of the brothers, they had to accept the other one being around a lot as well. In any case, they went bowling pretty much every weekend for three years because Dean wanted to actually wait for Sam to turn twenty-one before he took him to a bar or somewhere a lot less wholesome, but at the same time, he wanted him to be able to hang with him and his buddies.

Sam knew Dean knew he had already got drunk back in high school a couple of times, but he pretended to be excited about his first legal drink anyway and went along with the whole bowling pretense. Castiel went along because back then he hadn't met Meg yet and he was still a good Christian boy who really didn't enjoy Dean's usual alcohol soaked scene. And Benny had got along with it... well, because Benny went along with anything. He was just chill like that.

But the tradition had stuck even after Sam turned twenty-one and now they went bowling every couple of months. It was ironic in a way that Dean was the one just going along with it now when he'd much rather be back home with Emma.

And he tried not to sulk about it, he did, but it was kind of hard to do when Benny and Castiel kept rolling strikes and winning.

"I hate you," Dean commented after Castiel knocked down all the pines for a third time in a row.

Castiel smiled at him smugly.

"Don't be sore, brotha'," Benny said. "But, uh... I'm sorry to tell you this: you might need to change your name to Losechesters."

"Because you're losers," Castiel clarified as if it was necessary. Benny still offered him a fist to bump, and Dean had to wonder how long it had taken him to teach Cas the meaning of that gesture.

He turned to look at his brother and was relief to notice Sam wasn't taking the whole "it's just a game" zen route he sometimes took when this exact thing happened.

"Next time, we're not letting you choose the teams," he groaned, jotting down the results while holding the pencil so tight Dean was surprised it didn't break.

"It's simply a strategic advantage, Sam," Castiel replied. "Benny and I are the most efficient team when compared to you and Dean, so to guarantee an effortless victory..."

"I thought we'd agreed we were doing this to cheer Dean up!" Sam exclaimed. He immediately closed his eyes and his mouth, as if he had said something he really wasn't supposed to.

"Wait a second." Dean glared at his brother and then at his friends, who were pointedly avoiding his eyes now. "You were going to let me win? Out of pity? And you thought I wouldn't notice?"

"Well... we figured we were doing a good job," Benny said, scratching his neck.

Dean was so irritated now that the irony of the statement flew completely over his head.

"Oh, it's _on_."

But even with his newfound resolution and a couple of very impressive strikes, Castiel and Benny had left them so far behind that the Winchester brothers couldn't have won if they had somehow managed to roll strikes every time it was their turn. At best, all they could do to save face was not to lose so spectacularly. They still had to pay for all for Castiel and Benny's beers afterwards.

"You made a valiant effort," Castiel said.

"And it still wasn't enough," Benny added. They clanked their bottles of beer together, to the immense irritation of Dean.

"You're the worst," Dean said while the two laughed in their faces. "You're the absolute worst and I hope you're happy sitting there and being the worst."

"Immensely happy, yes," Benny replied. "In fact, I think I'm gonna have another one, since you're accepting defeat so graciously."

At least Sam joined him in his irritation, but by the time they were ready to leave, Dean realized it had to be at least partly pretended.

"Next time, I swear, Sammy, you're not playing with me," he told him while they waited in the parking lot for Castiel to get the car. "You're the reason we lost, you know that? You have the weakest wrists. You can't even lift the ball right."

He expected Sam to shoot back something about Dean having a terrible aim, as they did when these things happened. Instead, Sam turned his face over and it took Dean a minute to realize it was because he was trying to hide his beam.

"What are you laughing about? Benny got drunk on our money!"

"I am not drunk," Benny slurred from the floor where he was sitting and trying not to vomit. "Do you think I can't handle my beer, you... you... Losechesters?"

"I'm not laughing," Sam replied, clearly smiling still. "I'm just happy you had a good time, that's all."

Dean opened his mouth to tell him that was not the case, at all. But it dawned on him that he couldn't do that in good faith. He did have fun. At some point in the night, he had stopped feeling guilty about not being home with Emma, he had stopped feeling miserable remembering Lydia. And somehow that made him feel even worse because he should be sad. He should be worried. He hadn't even checked with Jo all the time he had spent there, he hadn't looked at his phone or...

"You're allowed to. You know that, right?" Sam said, as if he could read his thoughts. And sometimes Dean wasn't sure he couldn't. "You're allowed to not be grieving all the time, you're allowed to not be working or looking after Emma..."

"I have to look after her," Dean replied. "She's my daughter!"

"I know, and that's fine, Dean," Sam said. "It's great that you're so dedicated to her. I'm just saying what I always said: that you don't have to do it alone. We're here for you when you need to take a break."

"Yeah, listen to your brotha'," Benny muttered. They weren't sure when, but now he was laying on the pavement with his arm slung over his eyes like he was about to pass out right there. "He's a... a wise guy, you know?"

"How am I supposed to take a break if I also have to take care of all of you, children?" Dean huffed. He grabbed Benny's arm and tried to pull him up, but he was so heavy he needed Sam's help to holstered him to his feet.

Castiel parked the Lincoln right next to them and frowned at Benny.

"Is he okay?" he asked while the brothers pushed him inside the backseat.

"Wouldn't you know?" Dean replied and ran for the passenger door before Sam could even react. "You're going with him and making sure he doesn't puke anywhere," he said when his brother opened his mouth to protest. "I'm still not happy you ambushed me."

He sat next to Castiel, who was now, for the first time, showing some signs of remorse.

"Dean, we only wanted to help..."

"I know," Dean cut him off. "That's why I'm imposing a new rule: next time, you call me first and you let me decide if I want to go out, you hear me?"

"Loud and clear," Castiel nodded.

He turned over his shoulder to make sure Sam had got the message. His brother shot him and apologetic smile and nodded. There was no way to know if Benny had heard, because he was snoring loudly with his head against the window.

"Good," Dean huffed and adjusted the seatbelt. "Glad we had this talk."

 

* * *

 

Jo was slumbering peacefully on the couch with the baby monitor in her hand. Dean took two steps into the house and stopped to watch her. She had strands of her blonde hair falling over face, and for some strange reason, he had to suppress the urge to brush them aside. Instead, he reached for her shoulder and shook her gently.

"Hey," he called her softly. "I'm back."

Jo blinked at him groggily, as if she had no idea why he has there, but then she smiled.

“Hey,” she muttered. “How was bowling?”

“I got destroyed and humiliated,” Dean replied with a shrug. “How were things here?”

“Quiet.” Jo waved the baby monitor at him. “In fact, too quiet, so I went to check up on her a while ago, but she’s just sleeping…” She stopped, like she couldn’t think of an appropriate simile.

“Like a baby?” Dean suggested.

Jo laughed at him and stretched her arms over her head.

“Okay. I’m going to go home now.”

“You sure? It’s kind of late,” Dean pointed out. “I have a guest’s room… I don’t think we’ve ever had a guest since we moved in.”

“It’s fine. If I don’t come home tonight, I will never hear the end of it.”

She didn’t add anything else, but she winced visibly. Dean had the impression it was best not to ask exactly what she meant.

“Thank you for everything,” he said as he walked her to the door. “And again, I’m really sorry my brother abused his privilege and called you like that.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. He paid me handsomely while you were changing,” Jo replied.

Dean wished her good night and thought about leaving the conversation there, but when she was near her car, another doubt came over him:

“Hey, Jo. When did you… I mean.” He stopped and cleared his throat as she looked at him over her shoulder. “When did your friends stop calling you?”

It was a very private question and he had no right to ask it. He was about to tell her she didn’t have to answer when she did:

“When my dad died. I don’t blame then, though. Thirteen-year-olds don’t exactly know how to handle grief.”

She got inside of her Beetle and drove away before Dean knew what to do with that information.

So he did what he always did when he needed peace of mind: he climbed upstairs and went into Emma’s room. Just as Jo had said, she was fast asleep, her little chest rising and falling rhythmically. He wanted to pick her up and hug her, but at the same time, he didn’t want to wake her up.

He remembered what it was like growing up without a mom. He remembered Sammy asking why they didn’t have one when all the other kids did. He remembered his dad sulking away in the corner, not caring if they had finished their dinner or if they were going to bed in time. The fire that had taken their mom from them had also done away with most of their family pictures, so they only had a handful left and their dad used to watch them obsessively. His grief permeated everything he did, every word he said, and they had grown up with that burden on them, even Sam, who had been barely older than Emma was now when Mary Winchester passed away.

He didn’t want the same thing for his daughter.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “While it’s up to me, you’re going to be the happiest girl in the whole damned world.”

Emma sighed and shook a little, but didn’t wake up. Dean tiptoed out of the room, making all sorts of new resolutions in his head.


	5. Chapter 5

Emma learned to talk that summer.

Well, she learned to babble, but Dean insisted she was actually trying to form words and would start speaking at any moment.

“You need to film it when it happens, okay? I don’t want to miss it,” was his new go to recommendation every morning. “Every book says they may say their first words between seven and eight months and she’s seven and a half so…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jo said as she patiently dragged Dean to the door because otherwise he wouldn’t leave. “I’m sure Emma will wait until the weekend so you have the chance to witness it firsthand.”

“You think?” he said, fidgeting with his briefcase at the door.

Jo sighed and patiently explained to him what he already knew:

“Dean, you need to go to work, because if you don’t go to work, you don’t get paid. And if you don’t get paid, I don’t get paid and your baby has nothing to eat. So…”

“I know, I know,” Dean protested. He took another step outside, which was always a sign of progress. “But you’ll send the video to me if it happens, right?”

“Will be the first thing I do,” Jo promised.

She could understand his paranoia. Emma was going into that stage that involved a lot of firsts: first time eating baby food and pumpkin puree, first time standing up while holding onto chairs, first time playing in the sandbox and making friends in the park, first time recognizing people who weren’t usually in her sphere and screaming at them while she clang onto Jo’s hair for protection.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Jo apologized to the lady that had tried to pinch Emma’s cheek only to have her fingers almost bitten off by the three teeth growing in the baby’s mouth. “She’s… wary around strangers.”

“That’s okay, dear,” the lady said, smiling awkwardly. “You have a very spirited daughter, don’t you?”

Jo didn’t bother to correct her, but she added her to the mental tally of people that had assumed Emma was her daughter while in the park or the grocery store or the street. With this lady, the number was up to sixteen.

Also, it wasn’t that Emma was “spirited” or “feisty” or anything like that. She just didn’t like strangers or some people who weren’t strangers but definitely freaked her out for reasons that only made sense in her baby brain. For example, she hated Mr. Carrigan. He lived around the block and invariably, he tried to get Emma to give him a kiss in his ugly, wrinkled cheek while bribing her with candy. But not only was Emma too young to understand the concept of bribing, her first instincts whenever she saw the guy was to hide her face in Jo’s neck and stay there, looking over her shoulder from time to time to see if the creepy old guy had left. If he hadn’t, she went back into hiding immediately.

“She’s a little grumpy today, isn’t she?” Mr. Carrigan joked and he and Jo laughed awkwardly.

Because Emma wasn’t grumpy (not all the time, in any case), she just hated him. Jo tried to avoid walking on his block as deference to her. If Emma’s gut told her the guy wasn’t good, she wasn’t going to force her to socialize with him.

Other neighbors, Emma had decided, were just fine. They always passed in front of Lisa Braeden’s lawn, and now that she was used to seeing Jo, they always stopped to talk over her fence while Lisa worked on her garden. She made funny faces at Emma, and Emma laughed like sticking your tongue out of your lips was the pinnacle of comedy.

“She’s growing so pretty,” Lisa commented. “It’s such a shame about her mom.”

Jo didn’t mean to ask, she really didn’t, but her curiosity was just too great.

“Yes, what happened to her? Dean never talks about it.”

Lisa hesitated for a moment, perhaps to have plausible deniability in the future if word got out it had been her that gave Jo all that information, and then she told her about it. She was a yoga instructor and gave a special class to pregnant women, so she had known Lydia well in the months leading up to Emma’s birth. Lisa described her as a happy, positive person who was incredibly excited to meet her daughter. She had died from complications related to the pregnancy just hours after Emma was born.

“It was very tragic, but there’s nothing anyone could have done,” she told Jo. “It just… happened, you know?”

Jo nodded and didn’t tell her than when things “happened” randomly, it was even worse than if they happened with some sort of warning. Or so she imagined so. She had never had anyone die on her of a slow disease or anything like it. Her dad had been shot while on the line of duty. He had a night shift in a dangerous part of town. Ellen couldn’t sleep a wink until he returned home the following morning.

“Next year I’m going to hang the badge,” Bill Harvelle had told Ellen one time, when he thought Jo wasn’t listening in. “I’m going to get a boring desk job, and you won’t have to worry anymore, Ellen.”

It’d happened before he had a chance to keep that promise.

She remembered sitting in the kitchen, eating her cereal, getting ready for school. Her mom was nagging her to hurry up, but in retrospect, she might had been freaking out because Bill was late. Maybe, in the bottom of her gut, she knew or suspected that something was wrong.

There had been a knock on the door and Ellen had paled, but she went to open anyway. Bobby, Bill’s partner, was standing on the doorway, looking dejected and sad.

“Ellen,” he’d said. “I’m very, very sorry…”

Ellen had let out a shriek, as if someone had stabbed her or shot her. She was usually so composed, so firm, Jo had never suspected a sound like that could come from her mother. She’d never heard her cry like that before or since. Bobby had stepped in to hold Ellen and he had beckoned Jo to come closer as well. But Jo was too scared, too confused. She had ran upstairs and locked herself in her room until her mom had gone after her.

There had been a shootout outside of a meth lab. Her dad had been shot on the face. The undertaker had to put special make up on him so they could have an open casket funeral.

Jo had learned all those gruesome details later in life. All she knew back than was that her dad had died and her life had given a hundred eighty degrees turn. Ellen had never been the same. She had become a lot harsher, a lot angrier and a lot more overprotective of Jo, which was understandable, but had done nothing for their relationship now that Jo was an adult.

So yeah, she pitied Emma and Dean a little. And maybe because of that was that she agreed to Dean’s crazy demands, even if they resulted in nothing but hours of filming of Emma babbling that almost but not quite formed coherent words.

“She’s trying,” she told Dean when he came home. “But I don’t think she’s quite there yet. Don’t worry about it. Lisa said her son started talking when he was nine months old and that he hasn’t shut up since.”

“Ben’s a good boy,” Dena replied, his eyes fixed on Emma, who was sitting on her high chair and making a mess of her dinner. “How’s the tally going?”

“Today they had a new cashier at the grocery store. So that makes it seventeen people who had told me my daughter is very cute.”

Dean laughed out loud, though Jo had no idea what was so funny about people taking her for Emma’s mother.

“And how are you doing?”

Jo tilted her head at him, unsure what he meant.

“Summer’s almost over,” he pointed out. “Are you going to go back to school come September or…?”

Jo winced. She had enough of her mother probing her on the same topic, but she understood where Dean was coming from. He wanted to find out if she could still keep the same hours taking care of Emma or if he needed to hire someone else or (God forbid it) consider daycare.

“Don’t worry,” she said, with a shrug and grabbed her bag. “I’m still figuring things out. I’m going to stay with you for a while, it seems.”

“Are you sure about that?” he asked.

Jo stopped on her tracks on the way to the door.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know, you’ve been working here for months,” he pointed out. Had it really been that long? Jo couldn’t tell. “And I haven’t heard you mention anything about your plans for the future or… well, it doesn’t seem like you’re doing much figuring out at all.”

“Have you been talking to my mother?” Jo asked, trying to sound light. The immense irritation she felt hindered those intentions though, as Dean raised his hands defensively.

“I’m just wondering,” he said. “I just want to be ready for… well, for…”

“For what?” Jo asked. “Do you think I would walk out on you and Emma without warning or something?”

Dean opened his mouth and closed it again, making it clear that was exactly what he thought, yes. And honestly, it hurt a little. Jo realized she didn’t come out as the most responsible person ever, but she legitimately cared about Emma. And about Dean. She wouldn’t just leave them like that.

But instead of explaining that to him, she let her anger get the better of her.

“And why do you care what I do with my life? It’s not like we’re friends or anything.”

“Jo, I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, but Jo was far too angry to hear it. She turned around and marched towards the door, not paying attention to how many times he called her name.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, with a hand already on the doorknob. “You know, because this is my job.”

She closed the door behind her with a little more force than it was necessary. She half expected Dean to come running after her, but of course, that was a very childish fantasy. Maybe that was why he didn’t take her as seriously as he could have.

 

* * *

 

“Well, I fu… I mean, I screwed that up.”

He had been trying to lower his amount of swearing so Emma’s first world wouldn’t be something she couldn’t say in public, but in this case, he wished he had been allowed to curse his lungs out. Emma looked up at him with her big green eyes, her mouth and chin covered in puree. Dean got a cloth and rubbed it off.

“You know I didn’t mean it the way she took it, right?” he told her, even though he was pretty damn sure Emma had no idea what he was talking about. “I’m just worried about her… and about us, to be quite honest. What are we going to do without her? You hate strangers and Jo is pretty awesome to you. I can’t afford to alienate her.”

Emma tilted her head at him.

“Anyway, I should probably call her,” Dean sighed. He grabbed the spoon Emma had abandoned by the side and sank it on the puree. “Apologizing when you put your foot in your mouth is important, Emma. And I should totally apologize to Jo.”

Emma crunched her nose and pouted her lips, and for a moment, Dean was sure she was going to sneeze or vomit or both things at the same time. He had the napkin ready, but then the tiniest noise made him stop in his tracks.

“Jo.”

It sounded like a little explosion in her lips, like she still wasn’t sure how to modulate it properly.

“What did you say?” asked Dean, stunned.

“Jo,” Emma repeated, and she looked immensely pleased with herself, like she had been struggling with a very complicated problem for weeks and finally came up with a solution.

“Are you talking? Is that your first word?” Dean was beside himself. He picked Emma up and hugged her close, and then paced around the kitchen unsure about what to do. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God!”

“Jo,” Emma said again.

“Yes, yes,” Dean agreed. “Good idea.”

He ran to the living room, looking around for his cellphone. He found Jo’s name on the contact list. He hesitated, maybe thinking he should wait until she was home, but by then it would be Emma’s bedtime, and really, he needed to share this moment with her. Not with Sam or with Madeleine or with anybody else that would pick up for sure if he called them. No, Jo needed to see this. She needed to know how much she meant to them. He promised himself he would only call her twice and if she didn’t answer after that, he would wait until the following day to show her (how he was going to sleep that night, he didn’t know).

Jo picked up the second time.

“What is it, Dean?” she said, in a tone so neutral it sounded almost angry when compared to her usual preppy voice.

“Are you driving?”

“I’m at the gas station.”

“Okay, hold on. I’m going to Face Time you,” he said. He could hear Jo asking “why?” at the other end, but she accepted it anyway. Dean held the phone right in front of Emma who smiled wide and pointed at her babysitter with her little finger:

“Jo!”

Jo had exactly the same reaction as Dean: first she blinked at the baby in incredulity, then a wide smile appeared on her face right before she covered her mouth with her hand, as she was trying to muffle her screaming.

“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed. “She knows my name!”

“She does,” Dean said, proudly. “You’re her first word!”

“Jo!” Emma repeated, as if encouraged by the adults’ excitement over it.

“Yes, hi! Hi, Emma!” Jo replied. “Hi!”

Emma cooed and laughed and Dean felt a pressure in his chest. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought he was having a heart attack, but he had been there enough times to know it actually came from the sheer cuteness of what he was witnessing.

"That's right, Emma," he told her. "That's Jo. We like Jo, right?"

"Jo!" Emma repeated, as if it was an affirmation.

"And Jo is very good to us, and that's why we have to be good to her. Do you understand that?"

Emma blinked at him and babbled something. Now that she had discovered that she could make people do things or come to her with just her words, she was sure to learn to say other things soon. It was only a matter of time now. He wondered if he could film her when she was doing it and send the video to Sam...

She yawned wide and Jo laughed at the other screen.

“Isn’t it your bedtime, Emma?”

“She’s right, Emma,” he said, holding the phone away before the baby could snatch it from his hand. “We gotta let Jo pay for her gas and go home now. We’re going to see her tomorrow, okay?”

Emma mumbled something that vaguely sounded like “ke”, but he didn’t want to be too optimistic.

“That was mad cute,” Jo admitted.

“Right?!” Dean said, shaking his head. “Okay, I’ll leave you to it now…”

"Hey, Dean," Jo called him before he could end the call. "I'm sorry. I was... kind of a jerk to you."

"Hey, no, no need to apologize," he assured her. "I overstepped my boundaries. I'm sorry."

They stared at each other through the screen, unsure on where to go from there. Jo licked her lips, almost like she was trying to find some words and Dean opened his mouth at the exact same time.

"Jo!" Emma interjected again, but with a lot less energy as she rubbed her eyes.

“Get her to bed,” Jo chuckled.

“Good night, Jo.”

He ended the call and picked his daughter up, beaming as the pride burned up in his chest. But as he changed Emma into her pajamas, a horrible thought came over him.

“Your grandma is going to be so mad,” he commented, placing Mr. Eight right next to Emma on the crib as she yawned and stretched again. “She’s going to say I leave you too long with the nanny.”

He started singing “Hey, Jude” again as Emma blinked several times, trying to fight the fatigue from her eyelids. In the end, she succumbed. Dean watched her for several minutes more, kissed his fingers and placed them over her forehead before he hit the lights.

 

* * *

 

Jo went back home wishing she had told Dean to stay with her on the phone a little longer, maybe talk to her as he put Emma to sleep. It was a long drive and after their tense conversation earlier, she felt a little lonely. She was aware people her age was supposed to be finishing their careers, finding out what they wanted to do with their lives and all that crap; it wasn’t like her mother didn’t remind her of it at every opportunity. But Jo just wanted to have a little more time to find out, was that really so bad?

She tried to listen to music to escape those gloomy thoughts, but she find out none of the songs she had in her car with her were what she wanted to be listening to at that exact moment. She wanted something… a little closer to home.

Ellen was up watching a late night show. She insisted she did it because she found them funny and informative, but Jo could have sworn she'd never done it before. In fact, Ellen preferred to go to bed early, and the only reason she stayed up, Jo knew, was to wait up until her daughter came back from work.

Had she been in any other mood, she would have considered it paranoid and unnecessary. Did Ellen really think she couldn't drive her own damn car back home? Did she consider Jo so irresponsible that she thought her daughter would go partying somewhere without so much as a warning to her? Did she not realize caring for a grumpy baby who had discovered she could go anywhere if she crawled in her hands and legs didn't seem like it but was actually a very exhausting job? Besides, with Jo being in a constant state of mild existential crisis those days, all she really wanted to do was get into bed.

But that night, Jo felt sad and out of place, so when she came into the apartment above the bar and saw her mother dozing off on the couch under the blue TV glimmer, something ached inside of her chest. Ellen cared. In her own very forceful, sometimes shouty way, she cared.

She touched her shoulder and Ellen woke up with a jolt and raised her hand over her head.

"Mom, what the hell?!" Jo exclaimed when she realized Ellen was clutching a butcher knife in her hand.

"Oh, it's you," she said, lowering the knife and rubbing her face with her other hand. "Sweetie, don't scare me like that. I could have stabbed you."

"No kidding," Jo said, looking at her wide-eyed and not sure whether she should be amused or horrified at her mother's self-defense methods. "What's with you?"

"I was just watching the news and there's been a series of break-ins," Ellen explained, pointing at the TV. "They were saying it's a good idea to keep something at hand to defend yourself..."

"And where were this break-ins?" Jo asked, crooking an eyebrow.

Her mother looked away, but when she realized Jo wasn't dropping the issue, she admitted reluctantly:

"Minnesota."

"But we're in Kansas."

"Yes, I know that," Ellen groaned. "But who's to say there are no copycats who'll try to do the same thing here? Listen to me, Jo, it could be dangerous..."

Jo left her to her ranting and went to the kitchen. As always, she found a plate in plastic wrap inside of the fridge. Ellen had threatened in different occasions to stop saving Jo's plate for dinner and Jo had told her to go ahead, that she would just eat a bag of Doritos every night and called that a meal. But as she took it out and put it in the microwave, she knew in her heart Ellen would never go through with those threats. She cared about Jo being properly fed far too much.

"Well, meanwhile, in the real world, Emma learned to talk," she told her when Ellen stopped talking about burglars for a second to catch her breath. "She learned how to say my name."

"Really?" Ellen asked. Jo half-expected her to into a rambling about how that was pretty sad that she had learned to say the babysitter's name before she could say "daddy" or "mommy", but Ellen seemed to also be on a strange mood that night, because she smiled wide and let out a chuckle: "Oh, I hope you like being called, because now she's never going to stop repeating it."

"I guess it's only until she learns some new words." Jo shrugged and took the plate to the table. She stared for a second at the beef and potatoes and then looked up at Ellen: "What was my first word?"

Ellen tilted her head at her, like she was about to ask why the question, but to Jo's relief, she didn't. She pulled a chair out and sat with her while Jo ate her dinner.

"It was a little bit weird," she said. "We spent weeks trying to get you to say 'dada' or 'mama' or you know, things like that, but you were never much of a talkative baby. And then, one day, you were on the porch with your dad and your Uncle Bobby... you remember, right? When something annoyed him, he used to say 'Balls!'."

"I remember," Jo confirmed.

"Well, I was in the kitchen making dinner, I think, and all of the sudden, I heard you scream at the top of your lungs: 'Balls!'"

"You're kidding!" Jo chuckled.

"Nope." Ellen shook her head. "You seemed to find it funny, because the more flustered Bobby became, the more you repeated it: 'Balls, balls, balls...!'. He didn't know which way to run and Bill... well, you knew your dad. He just started laughing so hard. He then told the entire department how Bobby had taught his daughter to swear."

Her little smile faltered a little and Jo understood it was the best time to change the topic of conversation.

"How is he? I don't think I've seen him in ages..."

"I talk to him. Every other month," Ellen commented. "He's retired now. He doesn't do much, except stay at home, read... he always did love to read."

"Yeah," Jo nodded. Bobby always got her a book for her birthdays or for Christmas. "Hey, wouldn't it be nice to have him over for Thanksgiving? I mean, we don't have much else in the way of family, and you always make too much turkey for the both of us anyway."

"That's actually a great idea, honey. I'll tell him next time I call him."

It must have been a miracle: the Harvelle gals were actually agreeing on something. Jo didn't point out how rare it was because she didn't want to ruin the moment.

"Mom, go to bed," she said when Ellen started yawning.

"I don't want you to eat alone..."

"It's fine, mom. Really."

Ellen reluctantly stood up, but she stopped at the door to look at Jo once more.

"If a burglar comes in, I promise to stab him for you," Jo said, with a little smirk.

"Don't be smartass, Joanna Beth," Ellen warned her, but she still blew her a kiss and left.

Jo kept eating her food, barely tasting it. For some reason, the anecdote had made her even more melancholic. And there was really only one thing she could do in moments like that. She finished her dinner and washed the dishes. That was another thing she didn't do all that often: she left them on the sink and hoped she would get up before Ellen to do them or that she'd be able to sneak out of the house before her mother saw them. She had still to succeed, so some nights, despite her being so tired, she put on the extra effort and did it just to not hear Ellen nag her about it the following day.

That night she made them because she knew that, despite all the evidence of the contrary, Ellen didn't really like nagging her.

She closed the door to her room and watched the band posters hanging from her walls, her books abandoned in a corner and her computer resting over her desk. None of those things would help her sleep tonight. She knelt next to her bed and fished the metallic box she kept down there.

Ellen had thought that keeping Bill's things around the house after his passing would be too painful, so she had collected and given away most of them. She had kept some very important things though: his badge, his wedding ring. Jo was pretty sure his old hunting rifle must have been hidden somewhere in a closet, and she was so thankful her mother hadn't remembered it instead of grabbing a knife in her bout of paranoia.

Jo had kept an entirely different memento. When she was young, her father used to sing her to sleep. Except some nights, he had the night shift, but Jo still couldn't sleep without him singing, so he had borrowed a tape recorder and sang some of Jo's favorite songs so she could listen to them when he wasn't there to wish her goodnight.

As she grew up, she had used them less and less. When her father died, she had spent entire months listening to them. Sometimes, on nights like that, she still took them out and put them on.

"Hello, princess," late Bill Harvelle's voice invaded the room. "Are you in bed? Did you say goodnight to your mom?"

"Yes, Dad," Jo lied, because that was what he used to say when she was little.

"Okay. Let's begin then."

Her father was a Rolling Stone fan. Which is why he was so offended when Jo turned into a Beatles person, but she still loved the old songs he chose for her.

_Childhood, living is easy to do_

_Things you wanted_

_I bought them for you..._

Later in life, Jo had revisited those songs and found out her father had edited some parts to make them age appropriate. She didn't think that mattered though, as the meaning would have gone right over her head, but she still appreciated the intention. And now they meant so much more for her.

_Wild horses couldn't drag me away_

_Wild, wild horses couldn't drag me away..._

Jo sang out loud. She sang along not caring if anybody could hear her or not.

_Faith has been broken_

_Tears must be cried_

_Let's do some living_

_After we die..._

She sang until her voice broke, until she couldn't anymore because she was choking in unshed tears.

_Wild, wild horses_

_We'll ride them some day._


	6. Chapter 6

Dean remembered very little about the planning of his wedding, because Madeleine and the Amazons had taken over the entire thing and basically told him all he needed to do was stand at the end of the aisle, look pretty and say "I do" when they asked him. And he had been more than happy to oblige, not because he didn't care... no, yeah, he really didn't care. He could have married Lydia in front of a guy dressed like Elvis in a chapel by the road to Las Vegas and he'd have been damned happy about it. But to Lydia and her family, having a big, money sucking wedding was important, so he'd complied.

Having avoided the preparations of his own wedding, he figured he would never have to go through anything similar again.

And then, for reasons that were completely beyond his understanding, he found himself caught up in the preparations of his brother's wedding. Which was still more than eight months away.

"Well, I wanted it to be on July, but the place we liked for the reception was full until August unless we took this date in April, so I decided to go ahead and book it," Jess told a very surprised Sam during a family lunch at Dean's house on a Saturday.

Dean was too busy trying to get Emma to eat her puree without spilling it everywhere to grasp what she was saying. And even when he did, he failed to see what the big deal was. They had already decided to go for it, so why it'd mattered that it was on May or on in August?

"Come on, Emma, just have another bit," he said holding the spoon in front of her. "Look, look it here... here comes the plane!"

Emma was either too smart to fall for something like that or she was really full, because she looked at him frowning and shook her head.

"No," she said, displaying another part of her ever growing vocabulary. "No, no, no."

"Jess, are you sure? You said you wanted to have some time to really plan it all..."

"I know, I know," Jess said, shaking her head. "But we both really loved this place and I didn't want to miss it... hey, look, if you're not up for it, I can totally cancel the reservation. We'll find somewhere else for July..."

"No," Sam interrupted her.

"No!" Emma screamed hiding her face from Dean's fake airplane.

"You're right, we loved that place," Sam said, grabbing his fiancé's hand. "And I'm sure we can find a great wedding planner and... it'll be everything you ever dreamed of. I promised."

Emma slapped Dean's hand away and the bit of puree landed straight on Jess blouse, completely ruining the romantic moment they were having. Dean stared at his daughter, frustrated.

"Fine, you win," he said. "But I hope you know this mean you're wearing the pumpkin onesie on Halloween. And I will take millions of pictures and embarrass you in front of all your friends when you grow up..."

"Dean," Sam interrupted him while Jess laughed and tried to wipe the stain off her. "We're getting married on April."

"Yeah? Congratulations. Hadn't you already decided that before?" Dean asked, distractedly trying to clean the food that had ended up all over Emma's chin instead of her mouth.

"Yeah, but... we're getting married on April," Jess repeated. The euphoria in her voice was palpable, so Dean realized that he should show some sort of enthusiasm for the news.

"Hey, that's... yeah, that's awesome, guys."

"You're going to be my best man, right?"

"Little brother, you don't even have to ask."

It was true: even if Sam hadn't explicitly asked him to be, Dean would have still taken him to a stripper club and prepare an embarrassing speech for him. It was only fair after all the bowling games against Benny and Castiel that he'd made him lose.

"Oh, great." Jess smiled. "So we can count on you for wine and cake tasting? And you're going to help select a band, right? Because having a DJ would be so much easier, but I want something more authentic, more traditional..."

"Woah, woah, hold on there," Dean cut her off, raising Emma's spoon as if that would protect him from the avalanche of enthusiasm that was Jess. "Don't you have like maids of honor who do that stuff with you?"

"Well, yeah, but one of my maids of honor is going to be my cousin who lives in California," Jess explained. "And sometimes my friends are busy and... we'll like you to be part of this, Dean, really."

Dean threw them a sideway glance full of suspicion.

"Is this one of those things you guys do to get me out of the house because you pity me?"

"Not at all."

"Dean, please."

Their kids were going to be terrible liars.

 

* * *

 

Jo showed up with a Tupperware full of gravy and slices of turkey the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

“My mom cooked for like a dozen people,” she complained when Dean started laughing at her face. “I know, I know. I’m trying to find anyone who will take most of it.”

“Well, I’ll be happy to comply,” Dean said, taking the Tupperware. “Jess has a huge family so we didn’t get any leftovers.”

He took them to the kitchen where Emma was finishing her breakfast. She started bouncing on her chair the minute she detected her nanny.

“Jo, Jo, Jo…!” she chanted, stretching her hands towards her.

“Emma, Emma, Emma…” Jo replied mockingly. She grabbed a napkin and carefully cleaned the baby’s hand before picking her up. “Did you have a good time?”

“Best of times,” Dean nodded. “One of Jess’ cousins has a boy a little older than Emma. He tried to take her pink bow, so she pushed him off to the ground and he cried. It was a riot.”

“Ah, that’s my girl!” Jo smiled with pride. “We had my dad’s old partner over. I think my mom was nervous and that’s why he cooked so much. He’s staying over the weekend and I’m guessing we’re eating turkey ‘til kingdom come.”

Dean was about to ask her why was her mom nervous when the doorbell rang.

"Okay, those are Sam and Jess," he said, spinning over himself to check where he had left his scarf. "We're going cake tasting, but we're going to come back around noon, so..."

"Dean, it's cold outside," Jo pointed out. "Open for them, then give me your instructions."

Dean figured it was a bit impolite to keep his brother and future sister-in-law waiting in the biting November wind. So he mentally checked the list of all the things he needed to tell Jo as he went to open.

"And how is the happy couple faring?" he asked, and immediately wished he hadn't, because the happy couple looked anything but. Jess had to practically force a smile out as she stepped in while Sam kept talking on the phone:

"... how is it possible that you're booked that far in advance? Yes, I understand, but is there no possibility...?

"Trouble in paradise?" Dean asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, apparently, we're going to be dancing to silence at the reception because someone forgot to book the band," Jess said, clearly annoyed as she crossed her arms over her chest.

"I'm not screaming at you!" Sam screamed at the person on the other end of the line. "No, listen, this is really important for my fiancé..."

"Or a DJ," Jess sighed, dejected. "But God, I hate DJs."

"Well, really sorry to hear that," Dean shrugged. "Uh, I'm gonna get my scarf for the kitchen, okay?"

He ran before Sam started threatening to sue the band for not having a date available, and he was so glad he did, because the scene in his kitchen was infinitely cuter: Jo had sat Emma on the isle and was singing to her to entertain her.

_This evening has been so very nice..._

She lifted Mr. Eight and pretended to have a very deep voice while singing the next line:

_I'll hold your hands, they're just like ice..._

She apparently forgotten the next part, because she jumped right into the chorus as she waved Mr. Eight in front of Emma to pretend he was dancing:

_I really can't stay_

_Baby, don't hold out_

_Oh, but it's cold outside!_

Emma laughed and clapped her hands, apparently thinking Jo was putting on a very good show. And she wasn't the only one: Jess had followed Dean into the kitchen and was looking at his babysitter with unbridled admiration.

"You're a very good singer!" she congratulated her.

Jo startled and immediately hid Mr. Eight behind her back, looking down at her shoes as if she had been caught doing something extremely embarrassing.

"T-Thank you," she stammered. "I, uh... Emma likes it when you sing to her."

"Oh, yeah, and she's totally a Beatle's chick," Dean added. Jo picked Emma up and got her closer so Dean could give her a kiss. Then she grabbed him by the arm and gently started walking him to the door while he spoke: "Okay, so, you gotta be careful 'cause I've caught her trying to climb the chairs and she might fall from them. I've also taped all the electric plugs because she might want to stick her fingers in them now that she can crawl towards them. And don't forget to put her jacket on if you go out, 'cause I've been having some conversations with this mom group online and you would not believe how many refuse to vaccinate their freaking children, so now there's like super viruses running around..."

"I'll make sure Emma wear her thickest clothes," Jo said, interrupting his rambling because at some point they had crossed the entire living room and were now on the door. "You go get those cakes tasted like a champ."

Jess' bad mood had vanished, because she was covering her mouth with a hand to suffocate her laughter. Dean felt uncomfortable with that. Because Jo and him were used to doing that: he rambled on about all the things he was worried about that week while Jo patiently reminded him he actually had to go to work and reassure him everything was going to be fine. It was kind of awkward that another person had peered into that routine. As if something private had been interrupted.

He didn't have time to complain, though, because Sam ended his called and joined them at the porch with a huff.

"Well, that didn't work out," he muttered. "I'm sorry, babe, there's no chance we... but I'll call other bands, I'm sure someone, somewhere..."

"Look, Sam, it's fine," Jess cut him off. "Let's worry about the cake today and we'll see what we do about the band at some other time, okay?"

Sam didn't look convinced that it was going to be that easy, but he muttered: "Okay..." and that was the end of that discussion.

"I promise we'll be back soon," Dean promised.

"Don't worry, my mom and Bobby had a lot of catching up to do anyway," Jo shook her head. "Say bye, bye, Emma!"

"Bah-bah!" Emma said, waving her little hand.

She was so cute Dean almost couldn't bear it sometimes. He made a mental note to ask the baker what sort of cakes were appropriate for children to eat so he could bring back a piece for her.

"She's growing so fast," Jess commented after they got into the car and pulled out the driveway.

"I know, right? And she's so smart too. The other day we were in the park and we saw this dog..."

"I'm sure it was amazing and adorable and all those things, Dean," Sam cut him off. He still was clearly in a bad mood. "But you don't have to tell us, because we know all about it, because you wrote it on Facebook."

"Spoils sport." Dean rolled his eyes at his little brother, and luckily for him, Jess found their bickering funny.

"Hey, Dean, I wanted to ask you," she said, turning her head to look at him in the backseat. "Does Jo sing like, professionally?"

"No... not that I know, at least." Dean frowned, completely at lost as to why Jess would be asking something like that, but Sam caught on what was going on pretty fast.

"No."

"It never hurts to ask!"

"We're not that desperate yet."

"We are a bit desperate," Jess replied with a shrug. "See, maybe we should have postponed it a little bit..."

"We're not postponing the wedding, Jess," Sam said, stubbornly. "There's no need to, because we will absolutely, one hundred percent, find everything we need to make it work, okay?"

"Okay," Jess said. "But just so you know, I think Jo is a really good singer."

"That sort of doesn't change the fact she's an amateur."

"Well, I rather have an amateur singer before a professional DJ," Jess argued. "Because DJs suck."

"They do kind of suck," Dean said, despite his complete and utter disinterest in being part of that conversation.

"You are here for cake tasting," Sam reminded him. "So stick to that or I'll ask Cas to be my best man!"

"You wouldn't!" Dean said, genuinely offended at the threat.

"Oh, yeah. You know he can write a speech like nobody else," Sam threatened.

"Man, you are so going to regret that," Dean said, narrowing his eyes at his little brother. "I'm going to write the best damn speech anyone's ever delivered. You're going to be totally upstaged. There are going to be two things people will remember from your wedding: how beautiful Jess looked and how awesome my speech was, and you're going to have to swallow those words with a glass of ridiculously expensive champagne."

"That reminds me, we have to book the wine tasting," Jess commented when she finally could hold back her laughter.

Cake tasting was a completely different polemic. Sam wanted a healthy cake with fruits and things like that because you never knew how many guests had diabetes or were on a diet or something, Jess wanted a more traditional cake with chocolate fillings and a very nice crusty exterior. Dean just sat back while they argued and asked the baker if they had wedding pies.

"Sam, come on, you said you wanted this to be very traditional. What's more traditional than this?"

"Well, I know, I know I said that," Sam replied. "I don't want to insult our guests or make something they can't all enjoy."

"Sam, you're never going to find something to satisfy everybody," Jess said. "You know who has to be satisfied with this? You and I. This wedding is about us, after all."

"Yeah, listen to her, Sammy," Dean intervened, in between spoonful of pecan and chocolate pie. "After all, she's smarter than you. That's why you're marrying her."

Sam scowled at him, but a second later he became very interested.

"What are you eating?"

It turned out the caterers could make a myriad of different wedding pies for the reception, and some would have things like blueberry and apple, and others could have chocolate and vanilla and stuff like that. They could even put three different pies in a tower and "disguise them" as a cake so they could put the little figurines at the top and everything. Dean was delighted with the idea, and Sam and Jess were happy they could reach a compromise. So happy, in fact, that they spent all the drive back holding hands and beaming at each other. Honestly, Dean liked them better when they were bickering, but he was happy for his brother. He had found a good girl.

And that, inevitably, lead him to think about Lydia once again. She would have been a thousand times better helping them. Not because she was organized or anything like that. Hell, no. Dean couldn't count how many times he had found bras hanging from doorknobs and how many mornings she had turned the room upside down because she couldn't find her stockings (they were usually under the bed). She was a bit of a hoarder too: she never threw anything away, even things that were old or useless. They were so different in that aspect Dean thought she was going to drive him crazy when they'd first moved in together.

But she was also so sweet and spontaneous, and she tried to keep her chaos under control because she knew was a bit of neat freak and wanted his place to be clean and in order. She didn't think it was that important, and because she didn't like boxes, she could always think outside of them. He had only ordered a piece of wedding pie because he wanted to eat pie, Lydia would have been like: "You know, that's a great idea!" And she would have laughed with that laughter she had when she found something funny and amazing. She found a lot of things funny and amazing.

How come they didn't have wedding pies for their wedding?

He managed to keep a straight face until they arrived back in his home. He patted Sam in the back and kissed Jess in the cheek, walked through the garden and opened his door.

And that was as far as he got before falling apart: he hit his forehead against the wall and let out the sob that had been strangling him for months. For almost a year. In a little over two months, it would be Emma first birthday. It would be his thirty first birthday. And it would be a year without Lydia.

"Hey... wow," a voice said behind him.

Dean straightened his shoulders and quickly wiped his eyes. He had completely forgotten Jo was there. And worse of all, Emma was there. They were climbing down the stairs, probably because they had heard him come in and they found him having a breakdown. No, that couldn't be. He needed to pull himself together.

"Hey," he said. He cleared his throat, because his voice still sounded far too rough and broken. "I... sorry you had to see that. It's just been... how are you, guys? Did you have a good morning?"

Jo realized immediately he didn't want to talk about it and did exactly what Dean needed her to do: she climbed down the last steps and handed Emma to him.

"Da-da!" Emma exclaimed, throwing her little arms around his neck.

"Hey, little monster," Dean said, holding him close against him, letting the warmth of her small body console him. "How are you?"

"She's a little hungry. We were waiting for you to have lunch," Jo explained, smiling as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. "So, now you're here and... well, I guess I'll just go."

"Don't you want to go out for lunch with us?" Dean asked, before he could measure his words and their meaning.

It was probably abusing her time. She certainly would want to go home to her mother and their old friend and spend the weekend with them. He already felt guilty for asking her to come to work on a Saturday morning during the Thanksgiving weekend, when she probably should have been eating the leftovers from her mother's turkey and watching TV. He shouldn't have asked her something like that.

But... he didn't want to be alone right at that very moment. He knew how sad and pathetic that was. He could have called Benny, but that probably meant getting drunk, or he could have called Castiel, but that meant having to deal with Meg. And he didn't want to butt into Sam and Jess' happiness.

Jo was the only one left. And even though they saw each other every day and they joked and they both cared for Emma, they weren't exactly friends, but after so many months, he felt she was a staple of their lives.

And of course, she would have every right to refuse. Instead, she turned to him and said:

"Where are we going?"

They went to a coffee and deli nearby. Dean passed it on his way for work every day and he always thought it looked like a nice place to have a meal at, but he never actually went inside. But there was no time like the present, right?

He liked the interior as much as the exterior. It was fancy and cozy without being excessively cutesy. They had light blue and white walls and they had already hanged Christmas' decorations (Really? November wasn't even over yet!) and frames that said things like: "I drink coffee, therefore I am". But the chairs were comfortable and there was enough space between the tables that they could park Emma's stroller nearby without disturbing anybody. Of course, that lasted about five minutes, after which Emma started getting all fussy, so Dean picked her up to sit her on his knees and Jo immediately fished her coloring book and crayons from the bag.

"She's going to be an artist," Dean laughed, looking at all the pages Emma had filled with splashes of color that made no sense and were nowhere near inside the lines.

"Right?" Jo chuckled.

"Hello, my name is Tessa," said a woman with short straight black hair coming to their table and handing out menus with a smile. "Can I interest you in our sandwich of the day?"

Jo ordered a strange oriental sounding tea with her sandwich and Dean ordered water, because he knew Emma was going to want to drink whatever he drank. They also had sandwiches for children, but Dean made sure the waitress explain in painstakingly detail what they had before he decided if he wanted Emma to eat that or not. Tessa managed to do that without losing her smile, and that earned the place several points in Dean's mind.

"You know she has to try different things, right?" Jo laughed once Tessa walked away. "She's at that age where babies are supposed to do that."

"I know, I know," Dean groaned, lowering his head. "But she has a delicate stomach and... how do you know that?"

"I've read all the books on parenting you have," Jo replied. "I can't watch TV when Emma falls asleep on the couch."

"Oh." Dean had never stopped to consider that. Jo kept him updated on what Emma did or what she had done that day, but he never quite figured out what Jo did when Emma let her take a break. "And what did you think about them?"

Jo crooked an eyebrow, as if she wasn’t sure why would Dean want her opinion, but she offered it anyway:

"Well, they are... okay, I guess. Some of them sound like extreme bullshit, though. I sincerely don't think babies should be smothered with blankets unless it's literally freezing outside."

Dean laughed and scratched the back of his head. He wasn't going to confess how many blankets exactly he had planned to pack for Emma in a few weeks when they went visiting Madeleine and the Amazons for Christmas.

"There you go," Tessa said, returning with their orders and placing them in front of them.

"Thank you very much."

"You're welcome," Tessa said, smiling. "By the way, can I just say what a beautiful family you are?"

Dean and Jo stared stunned at them a little, not sure whether to laugh or not.

"We are not..."

"She's not... she's just..."

"I'm not Emma's mom," Jo said. "I'm just the nanny."

Dean supposed that was the standard explanation she gave on those cases, but it only seemed to confuse Tessa further. She blinked at them a couple of times before muttering "Okay..." before walking away.

"So how far is the tally now?" Dean wanted to know.

"Nineteen," Jo replied. "And now she probably thinks you're cheating on your wife with the nanny."

"What? No, why would she think that?" Dean asked, completely at lost.

"Well, there's the fact nanny's are by default the person you leave your children with when you can't be with them," Jo explained.

Dean chuckled almost against his best judgment. Of course Jo was right, but that didn't make the situation any less funny. Jo grinned at him, and a second later they were both laughing out loud at people who judged other people and made assumptions with no evidence.

"Wata!" Emma demanded after a while, when she grew tired of drawing. "Dada, wata!"

"Okay, okay, bossy," Dean said. He placed the straw inside of the bottle and placed it on her mouth for her to suck. "There you go."

Jo leaned her chin on her hand, her eyes glimmering as she looked at Emma.

"She's growing so fast," she commented.

"Soon she's going to start walking and God helps us then," Dean joked. "You know I never really wanted one of these?"

"You didn't?" Jo leaned back on the chair, unable to hide her surprise. "But you're so good with her."

"Yeah, well, you see... my mom died when I was very young. My brother was six months old," Dean explained. "And our dad was... he was brokenhearted. I'm not saying he was a bad dad or anything, it was just that, sometimes, he... I had to take care of Sammy most of the time," he completed, because despite everything, he wasn't about to trash talk his late father in front of this girl she barely knew and also his daughter. Granted, Emma was too little to understand most of it, but babies absorbed everything you did or said around them. So he wasn't going to risk it.

Jo didn't press the issue, but she did seem to get the gist of it: "That's a lot to put on a kid."

"Yep," Dean agreed, a little uncomfortable that he had brought up the issue on the first place. "Anyway, when Sammy was old enough to care for himself and I went to college, I... went wild for a while. Enjoying the freedom, meeting lots of different ladies... and a couple of guys too... but I didn't want a relationship. I was too busy living life, having epic parties with my buddies. So if you had asked me back then if I wanted to get married, to have kids, get tied up in an apple pie life... I would have told you 'Fu... fudge, no'."

Emma raised her eyes at him, her lips still wrapped around the straw. Dean prayed to all gods he knew about that she wasn't about to learn how to say a new word. Jo chuckled again, as if the prospect of him slipping up and cursing in front of his infant daughter was hilarious to her.

"So how you met Emma's mom?" she asked instead. Immediately, her face went pale and she raised a hand as if to stop him. "You don't have to answer that. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked."

"No, it's fine, it's... it was actually at one of those epic parties," Dean said. "We had a... umh..."

He looked down at Emma, who was now dead-set in ripping apart his sandwich, but she apparently had no interest in eating it.

"Gotcha," Jo said, clicking her tongue.

"And... she didn't call me the following day," Dean continued. "Or answered my messages. Or any other form of communication, really."

"She ghosted you?" Jo burst into laughter, and Dean didn't know what the worst part was: that she found it funny or that she was absolutely right.

"Yeah, see... I might have had a bit of a reputation around campus," he confessed. "And don't get me wrong, Lydia had every right to believe it, but it still stung me a little bit. So finally I decided to act like a big boy and went to talk to her. I was all like: 'What happened? I though we had a good time, why don't we have an encore?' yadda, yadda. And she looks at me and she goes 'Yeah, it was all very pretty, but you're not the kind of guy a girl wants around for too long.' I'm like, 'What's that supposed to mean?'"

He stopped, because Jo was laughing uncontrollably again. Clearly, that was some sort of girls code, because Jo had understood instantly what it took him a baffling amount of time to get.

"Long story short, when I finally figured it out, I felt... challenged."

"Like she was challenging you to date her," Jo said.

"Like she was challenging me to be good enough to date her," he agreed. "Because I'm not an as... not a jerk, you know? I'm not a bad person and I wanted her to see that. So I cleaned up my act, I asked her out on a date – a proper, honest to God, date. I will never know why she said yes. Maybe she was curious to see how long I could keep it up. No idea. We went for pizza and to see a rom-com and we laughed at how bad it was. By the time I was walking her back to her dorms, I realized I liked letting people see I was a good person. And I liked her for encouraging me to be that guy. She made me want to be a better man... is that from a movie?"

"Yeah. Jack Nicholson," Jo confirmed.

"Well, it's true, though," Dean said. "Lydia, she... she made me better."

He stopped, because that pressure in his chest that announced the waterfalls were coming. Jo discreetly moved Emma into her own lap and pretended not to notice when he blew his nose in a napkin.

"So yeah... I miss that gal," he concluded, pathetically.

"Goes without saying," Jo replied, but she lifted Emma a little bit. "But you got this gal to be better for now, huh?"

Dean snorted and made a funny face at Emma. She responded by sticking her tongue out at him. He was pretty sure he hadn't taught her that, but she was so adorable he could hardly blame Jo for it.

"You're going to get stuck like that, little one," he warned her. Emma started playing with the crumbs on Jo's plate without even paying attention to him.

He didn't know at what point of the conversation they both had finished their lunch, but now that it was over, he didn't want it to end. He couldn't talk about Lydia like this with people he knew better. It was a completely weird thing, but he had the feeling Jo wouldn't judge him. She wouldn't tell him he needed help or try to be all supportive and nice to him. She would just listen to him and nod along, and maybe that was exactly what he needed. Someone who would listen.

But then again, he didn't want the lunch to end in that bummer note, so he changed the subject:

"So, funny thing..."

He told her about Jess and Sam's predicament about the band, and Jo was as surprised as him.

"Well, I took some singing lessons when I was younger," she explained. "But that was ages ago. I had a rock band with a couple of friends when I was in high school..."

"No kidding?" Dean arched an eyebrow.

"We never played anywhere outside of some birthday parties and talent shows," she said. "We got second place against a group of cheerleaders who did a choreography with very short skirts at our school."

Dean laughed again and started packing Emma's crayons. He had already monopolized much of Jo's time and he didn't want her to get sick of him and Emma so fast.

They paid for their sandwiches and left a generous tip despite the fact Tessa shot them a glance full of suspicion and doubt, as if she thought they were trying to bribe her not to tell anybody he had seen them there. Dean didn't really care if the entire neighborhood found out. He was glad he could share that time with Jo and Emma and he told her so as they were walking back to the house.

"Always happy to help," Jo said. And in any other person, the phrase might have almost come out sounding incredibly sarcastic. When she said it, there was nothing but sincerity in it. "I should get going."

"Oh," Dean said. For some strange reason, he had expected her to come into the house one last time to look for something, but she had her coat and her scarf and her little green hat already on her. And her car was right there, so really, there was no need for her to come in and he was being stupid just for thinking about it. "Okay then. Say bye, bye to Jo, Emma."

"Bah-bah!" Emma said, waving her little hand.

"Bye, bye, Emma!" Jo replied, waving in return.

Dean walked towards the porch, but stood there as Jo put on her seatbelt and started the engine. And he stayed there long after her yellow Beetle had disappeared around the corner.


	7. Chapter 7

The snow came soon and hard that year and Dean considered his options for travelling to Madeleine's. He could go by plane, sure, but he could never even set a foot in one without shameless amounts of alcohol and maybe a sleeping pill, because like hell he was going to be hundreds of miles in the air and remain conscious at the same time. But when you travelled with a restless eleven-months-old baby, it wasn't that simple. He would have to stay awake to entertain her, make sure she didn't cry or that she didn't need to be changed, or that someone didn't steal her away in the airport or...

He could also just make a road trip with Emma all the way there, but it was a long drive and there were blizzards announced on the forecast. So what if he fell asleep on the wheel or slipped on the road and ended up crashing against something or...?

"Dean, you're letting your imagination run wild," Jo said, rolling her eyes at him. "If you're so nervous about it, just take a bus."

That seemed like the logical option, certainly.

Dean was glad that after that lunch they had shared, Jo had taken to linger a little longer after he arrived home. They had a tea or a cup of coffee (despite Dean arguing that Jo wouldn't be able to sleep afterwards) and they chatted about the day: Jo told her all the things Emma had done that day and Dean complained about his boss being a pain in the ass and waiting anxiously for Christmas. Yes, he would have to spend the time with his mother-in-law and all of Lydia's family, but they had reasons to at least try to get along with him. His boss could bully him and make him work extra hours and Dean was still forced to be polite and laugh at his horrible jokes.

"Why do you even work for that guy if he's such a tool?" Jo asked him one night. "What do you even do?"

"Product advertising. I manage sales," Dean replied. "It's a pretty good deal. I still have to pay the mortgage for this place and my daughter needs to eat. That's why I work for dear old Zachariah, even though some of the comments he makes about the interns who could be their granddaughters make my skin crawl."

"Yeah, there's always that one idiot," Jo said, rolling her eyes. She emptied her mug in one gulp as if to end the conversation there, but Dean figured it was as good a time as any to bring the topic of Jo's future back again.

"What would you do? I mean, if your boss was a tool. Would you just resign?"

"Luckily, I don't have to think about it, because my boss' a swell guy." Jo shrugged.

"Why, thank you," Dean said, humbly. "But that wasn't what I was asking."

"I know what you were asking," Jo said. "And the answer hasn't changed. I'll let you know as soon as I figure it out."

Dean wasn't too crazy about that answer, but what could he do? Jo was still young, she had time to kill, time to find out what she wanted to do. He didn't know why it worried him so much. Maybe it was his big brother instincts kicking in every time he was around her. He didn't know, but he sure hoped that whatever bridge Jo had burned during the last year, they would lead her to end up in a better place than she was now.

"What were you studying anyway?"

She shrugged, as if she would like to know too.

"I was indecisive, I took a lot of electives," she explained. "My friends Anna and Cassie want to be journalist, and I figured ‘hey, that kind of involves writing’. So I took some of their classes, but they were boring as all hell. Then I took some classes on philosophy, which were interesting, but my mother reminded me that choosing philosophy as a major was basically dooming myself to a life of unemployment. But I guess that warning backfired in ways she wasn't expecting, because now I have no degree, but I do have a job."

She attempted to laugh it off, but her frustration at the whole ordeal was more than evident.

"Your mother worries a lot about you," he pointed out.

"Well, that's what parents do," Jo replied. "She just wants me to be okay, you know? Safe. Like, if I had a job selling advertisement that paid me good money, but I had to deal with a boss that makes lewd comments about the interns, she would tell me to suck it up."

Dean chuckled, but he thought he was now understanding what Jo's problem was.

"Your job doesn't have to make you happy, you know?" he commented. "It just has to feed you and clothe you and put a roof over your head. You can be happy when you come home at the end of the day."

"Yeah, well, I don't have a disgustingly cute daughter to come home to," she pointed out. "So I can try to figure out something that both makes me happy and pays the bill at the same time."

She was certainly within her right to do it, of course. That didn't mean that her mother was going to stop worrying about her.

"Speaking of which, I should get going," Jo said. She placed the mug on the sink. "Mom wants me to help her buy a new pullout couch tomorrow. Apparently, Bobby got a contraction when he stayed with us over Thanksgiving for sleeping on our couch, so she wants to avoid that to get him to visit us more often."

"I'm sure she enjoys his visits very much."

Jo froze halfway into wrapping her scarf around her neck.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Well, you know, just that you said you have no other family and he was a close friend to your dad... and you're here all day, so she might enjoy the company... I didn't mean anything by it, really," he concluded clumsily as Jo stared at him with a growing concern on her face. "I'm just sure your mom likes having people around, that's all."

"Oh," Jo muttered. "Yeah, I'm sure it's that."

She shook off the uneasiness with another shrug. Dean and Emma came to say goodbye and wish her a good drive home at the door. So of course they didn't see when Jo's concern returned in full force as soon as she was alone on the road once more.

 

* * *

 

"I don't know," Ellen said, lying on the couch that the guy at the furniture store had just unfolded for them. "It feels a little... woody, you know?"

"You've said that about the last five couches we've seen," Jo replied. "Pullout couches are just not comfortable, mom. Deal with it. You'd be better off buying an air mattress and calling it a day."

"I'm not making Bobby sleep in an air mattress!" Ellen protested.

"We have some of those, too," the clerk intervened. "If you'd like to see them..."

"We're fine, thanks," Jo interrupted him. "Why don't you give us some minutes to think it over, please?"

"Of course." The clerk gave them a smile that clearly indicated he wasn't in the mood for dealing with whatever drama Jo and Ellen had going on there.

Jo moved to sit by Ellen's side on the couch.

"What's worrying you, mom?" she asked her. "You know Bobby's a tough guy. If he really wants to see us, no contracture in the world’s going to stop him."

"I know that," Ellen said, moving her head to avoid her gaze. "But it's common courtesy to want your guests to be comfortable at your home. Which you would know, if you had your own home."

"You're changing the subject, mom," Jo pointed out. She moved to lay by her mother's side and placed her hands over her stomach. "So really, what's worrying you?"

"Nothing," Ellen insisted, unconvincingly. "I just realized how nice it was to have Bobby around, so maybe I'll start inviting him over a lot more and maybe... maybe he doesn't want me to do that," she added, not even giving Jo some time to recover from that whiplash. "Maybe we're totally forcing this on him. We shouldn't do that. We should..."

"Mom, Bobby has no other family we're keeping him from," Jo said. "And you know he doesn't do anything he doesn't want to do, so there's that."

For once in her life, Ellen Harvelle went quiet. And that was even more suspicious than the sudden urgency for buying new furniture.

"Is there something you're not telling me?" Jo asked. "About Bobby?"

"No," Ellen replied curtly. She sat up. "You know what? I don't like this one either. Let's go to another store."

They went to two others before Ellen found whatever specific thing it was that she was looking for. In Jo's opinion, there was no difference between all the couches they had tried out, but Ellen looked very pleased with herself as she put forwards her credit card on the counter.

"I should probably buy some pillows too," she remembered suddenly. "Maybe one of those ergonomic ones. He'll like that, right?"

"Maybe you can give it to him as a Christmas present."

Jo immediately regretting saying that.

"Oh, no." Ellen paled. "We haven't bought him a Christmas present! We have to find one now!"

In retrospective, maybe it was a good thing she said it when she said it, because if they had postponed it a little longer, there would have been stuck in queues that went around the corner and people desperately making a last minute grab. As it was, they still had to wait in an annoyingly long queue at the book shop, but at least people were more patient and nobody trampled anybody.

"Do you think he's going to like this one?" Ellen asked, about the third book she had been totally sure was the one they definitely, absolutely, had to get for Bobby. "I know he likes supernatural fiction, but this might be a little too much..."

"Mom, I'm sure Bobby would love it because it comes from you," Jo said. She wasn't really listening to her own words, she only wanted to get out of the overcrowded stores she had been into the entire day and go home and maybe binge watch some mindless series. A typical Saturday night where she didn't have to think or worry or...

"You really believe so?" Ellen asked. She sounded indecisive, and if she changed the book one more time, Jo was going to start screaming.

"I am one hundred percent sure."

 

* * *

 

It wasn't until actual Christmas Eve rolled over that she would come to understand the actual meaning of what she had said.

She woke up to the sound of pots and plates in the kitchen at seven in the morning and she knew right away they were going to have a repeat of Thanksgiving, and this time, she didn't know if she could trick the neighbors and her boss to accept the leftovers. So even though they have a Christmas Eve celebration that night at the bar and she needed to get as much sleep as possible, and even though it was cold and dark and she just didn't want to leave her nest of blankets at all, she gathered whatever courage she had left and dragged herself out of her room.

"What are you doing?" she yawned at her mother.

"I thought I'd start cooking early," she said. "After all, tomorrow's Christmas and everything will be close, so if I start now, I'll still have time to run to the store and get whatever I need."

Jo knew instantly that 'I' really meant _'I will send you, my daughter, and you will have to do it because you dropped out of college and live in my house rent free'_.

"Okay, mom, really, I'd like to know what's going on," she asked. "We never have big celebrations around this time of the year..."

"Yeah, why don't we?" Ellen replied, picking carrots and tomatoes from the inside of the fridge. "It's what everybody does, so why not us?"

"Because you hate the holidays and I'm an atheist," Jo pointed out. "We haven't had a big Christmas dinner since..."

Her voice trailed off. It had been since the Christmas before her dad died.

Ellen stopped everything she was doing, the knife she was going to use hanging idly in her hand.

"Well, maybe we shouldn't have let the holiday spirit die," she replied, and immediately resumed chopping enough vegetables to feed a small platoon. "So, it's not too late to fix it, right? Isn't that the moral from that play you were at when you were six? The one where you have to use the blanket and all that?"

"A Christmas Carol. I was the Ghost of Christmas Past," Jo reminded her. She smiled a little at the memory. Both Ellen and Bill had gone to see her that time and they had filmed the whole thing from the third row where they sat.

"Yeah, that," Ellen said. She turned to her and crooked an eyebrow. "Why are you standing there for, anyway? If you have time to lean..."

"I'm going back to bed."

"Joanna..."

"Consider it your Christmas present to me," Jo argued. "One day when you just let me sleep off without forcing me to do any chores."

She half expected Ellen to come after her and continue to harass her until Jo decided to make herself useful. But for once, she didn't, and when Jo opened her eyes again, she was pleased to see it was almost noon.

The Christmas Eve celebration went well. Most of the regulars came, made a toast and wished them a Merry Christmas before staggering back home. Some stayed with their friends to play pool, some drank a little more and had to be ushered away in taxis while Ellen hid their keys underneath the counter, but it was a relatively calm night.

Jo served the tables, smiled at the patrons and earned her tips, but she kept watching her mother throughout the entire ordeal. It was subtle, but she noticed it. Ellen usually was nicer to her regulars than she was to her own daughter (though not by a wide margin), but that night she was even snappier than usual: she didn't stop to joke with anybody, she didn't returned any quips and she looked at the end of her very short patience with the clients that were still drinking past the two hour mark.

"Are you going to nurse that forever, Rudy?" Ellen asked to one of the last people in the bar.

Rudy looked up at her from his glass of whiskey like he was slightly offended.

"Damn, Ellen, if you don't want me here, you could just say so," he commented. He paid for his whiskey and left with a half-hearted "Merry Christmas."

Jo figured there was no point in asking Ellen again what her problem was, because Ellen simply was going to deny there was a problem at all. But Jo got the impression she just wanted that night to end so she could fast-forward to the following day.

The following day and Bobby's arrival.

"I told that stubborn old man not to drive at night," she complained while she watched her phone anxiously. "Why does he insist on driving everywhere, I'll never get it, he just... ah!" she exclaimed when her phone lit up with a message. For the first time in hours, her face relaxed and the wrinkles around her eyes smoothed over. "He just stopped at a motel to rest. He says he'll be here in the morning."

"Great," Jo mumbled, because she honestly didn't know what else to say. Her mother was typing out a message for Bobby and her eyes just looked... different. Brighter. It wasn't just the relief to know Bobby was safe for the night, it was the fact that Bobby was coming over and she would get the chance to see him again and...

And suddenly, a suspicion that had lingered just right out of her full understanding since Thanksgiving fell in place and it was so obvious Jo felt really stupid for not figuring it out much earlier.

“What is it?” Ellen asked when she noticed Jo was still standing on the doorway. “You need something, sweetie?”

“Nope. Nothing. Good night, mom.”

 

* * *

 

Bobby arrived, just as he had announced, early in the morning. Jo was there to receive him because Ellen had dragged her out of the bed at a criminally early hour and started ordering her around.

"You need to have a shower so I can clean the bathroom, because you always clog up the drain, and you need to check if we still have coffee and run for more..."

"Mom, it's Christmas," Jo reminded her, sitting in her bed and rubbing her eyes. "If I go for coffee now, I will have to drive for hours until I find an open shop, and even then, I wouldn't be able to buy anything."

"Why the hell not?"

"Well, for one, I would consciously object to giving money to the asshole making his employees work on Christmas," Jo pointed out. "And for another, it will probably be full of people whose mother send them there because their hysteria prevented them from remembering they'd bought coffee the last time they went grocery shopping."

"I'm gonna go double check that now," Ellen promised, rising a finger at Jo that clearly indicated that if she was wrong about this, she would pay dearly. She was in such a manic state she didn't even realize her daughter had called her "hysteric", but Jo wasn't about to bring it up.

Anyway, since she was up already, she might as well jump in the shower and get dressed before her mother had another brilliant idea about what she was going to need from the desolated landscape their neighborhood became with Christmas.

Holidays weren't usually that big of a deal for them in any case. They had a nice dinner, exchanged gifts or say thanks, and then Ellen gorge up in her TV shows and Jo either listened to music or wasted the day away on the Internet. This year had been different only because they had invited Bobby, but even then it hadn't been that different: they ate the turkey, stayed on the table for a while, and then Ellen and Bobby had drunk beers and talked in front of the TV while Jo disappeared inside of her room. She was definitely glad that her mother had reconnected with him, but she didn't understand where all this new energy and need to impress him came from.

Unless her lingering suspicion that there was something else going was right.

But no. That was a stupid thought. Bobby had been her dad's best friend and her mom had never even thought of another man after his passing. It couldn't possibly be that.

She turned off the water and she was dressed and clean by the time the doorbell rang downstairs.

Bobby looked like a bear between his coat, his scarf and his hat.

"Hey, Merry Christmas!" Jo greeted him with a quick hug and guided him inside and upstairs. "How was your trip?"

"Well, the states of the roads are a disaster, the people at the gas station always move like they're filming a slow-mo picture and I'm pretty sure the motel I stayed in last night had bed bugs." Bobby scratched his side, perhaps to prove a point. "But other than that, it was okay."

Jo was starting to understand why he got along with her mom. They both had the same propensity for nagging and ranting about the smallest things.

Bobby kept complaining about the weather, the prize of gas, the couple next door in the motel that had very loud sex and kept him awake, while he put down his bag and peeled away his several layers of clothes before throwing them at Jo for her to put away. His grey bearded face, red nose and balding head finally emerged, and once he was lighter, he finally put on a smile for Jo.

"But I'm glad to be here," he concluded. "Merry Christmas, girl."

"Bah, humbug!" Jo replied.

Bobby got the reference, because he chuckled and stretched his hands, making every one of his back muscles crack.

"I am dying for something hot. Is there coffee in this house?"

"If I'm to be believed." Jo shrugged and didn't bother to explain the joke. She led Bobby to the kitchen and found the coffee exactly where she knew it would be.

"Let me help you get started with that," Bobby offered. "How about some pancakes? I'm sure your mom will like those."

"When did you learn to make pancakes?"

"I live alone. I like to experiment in the kitchen," he said, and Jo knew right the way he was lying. When he had been there over Thanksgiving, the only appliance he seemed familiar with was the microwave. But she chose not to call him on it.

Besides, he did seem to know what he was doing: he beat the pancake mix with incredible energy and poured it into the pan. A few seconds later, while Jo busied herself putting mugs and cutlery on the table, they started sizzling and letting out a scent that made her stomach rumble.

"Nice," she commented.

"Oh, yeah," Bobby said, stepping back with the pan in his hand. "But now comes the tricky part..."

It was also the part when the breakfast almost went pancake-less.

Bobby threw it in the air to flip it.

At the exact same time, Ellen walked into the kitchen with her gloves and her cleaning brush still in hand.

"Jo, why are you... Bobby!"

Bobby took his eyes for the pancake for what Jo could have swear was less than a millisecond, but that was more than enough for disaster to strike. It landed on his face instead of back in the pan, smudging him and his shirt with half-done pancake mix while Ellen dropped the brush and covered her mouth with her hands, staring at the disaster with horror in her wide eyes.

"Balls," Bobby grumbled.

And for reasons that were beyond her understanding, Jo cracked completely at the whole situation.

"Joanna Beth, stop laughing!" Ellen scolded her while she grabbed paper napkins from the cabinet and strode towards him. "Stop laughing and come help me clean! Oh, my God, Bobby, why did no one tell me you had already arrived? I would have come to help... why are you laughing too? Stop that!"

But her own nagging was soon drowned out by uncontrollable giggles. They must have looked like a trio of completely deranged people, laughing like that with a half made pancake smudging the floor and cleaning gloves and a mug of coffee Jo never came around putting down.

But Ellen hadn't laughed so hard in such a long time. And if the way Bobby tried to control his chuckles and go back to his usual grumpy self with no results was anything to go by, neither had he.

And suddenly Jo decided it didn't matter. She had to have been blind not to see the way her mother's eyes lit up when Bobby talked to her, and how he followed her around the room with his gaze. How they joked with each other while they cleaned the mess and how flustered they became when their hands grazed by chance. They did nothing but confirm Jo's suspicions, but it didn't matter.

Ellen was happy. They were a family. And that was what was important.

"Okay, let me... let me get the broom," she said between puffs for air.

Finally, after what seemed like a criminal long time, breakfast was ready (there was still enough mix to make half a dozen more pancakes, so that was good) and they all sat down to enjoy a mug of freshly brewed coffee, that Ellen had definitely remembered to buy.

"I told you there was enough."

"Nobody likes people who brag when they're right, you know that?"

"Oh, is that why you do it all the time then?" Jo teased her, sticking her tongue out at her.

"I don't... do you think I brag?" she asked, turning to Bobby.

And maybe it was a good thing to have a witness for those discussions, because Bobby gestured so-so with his hand while he made a noncommittal: "Eh..." sound.

"I do not!" Ellen protested. "And I resent you say otherwise, Robert Singer."

"Of course you don't brag, Ellen," Bobby admitted with a little smirk. "But you do nag quite a bit."

"Doesn't she?" Jo asked.

It was worth it just to see her mom all annoyed and irritated at them.

That was the start of an actual memorable Christmas, just like Thanksgiving had been memorable. It was a strange thing, but when Bobby was there, they didn't do the whole holidays thing because it was something that they ought to do, but they genuinely, honest to God wanted to spend time together. Well, Ellen and Bobby especially seemed to want to spend a lot of time together. Jo decided to make herself scarce after the dinner, but until then, she could find ways to keep the good humor going.

"Does anybody want to play something? We got _Sorry!_ , _Monopoly_... uh, checkers? Twister?"

“I don’t think my back allows me to play Twister anymore,” Bobby complained. “But I can definitely take any of you, ladies, in checkers.”

“Oh, you really think so?” Ellen asked, crooking an eyebrow. “You sure you want to do this, old man?”

They set up the checkers board and spent the next hour trying to outmaneuver each other while Jo did the dishes and then flailed down in their brand new pullout couch to read a music magazine until lunch time. From time to time she could heard voices and laughter coming from the kitchen, and she smiled to herself knowingly.

They had a light lunch consisting mostly on sandwiches, since the dinner was going to be so abundant (“Tell me you didn’t cook for an army again, Ellen. I still have leftovers from Thanksgiving in my fridge.”) Jo lost humiliatingly against both of them in _Sorry!_ She pretended to be all sulky about it and turned on the TV to find a Christmas movie. They were everywhere, of course, but she finally settled for the musical version of _A Christmas Carol_. For the sake of old days.

“Oh, I thought you were singing,” Bobby commented when he walked out of the kitchen with some cocoa for her.

“Right. Because I have a hidden chorus of children hidden in the coats’ closet,” Jo replied, rolling her eyes. She still accepted the cocoa as a gesture of good will.

“Haven’t heard that pretty voice of yours in a while,” Bobby commented, settling down on the couch next to her. “Do you remember when you used to put on your daddy’s sunglasses and use a wooden spoon as a microphone?”

“Oh, my God, no,” Jo cringed, but the train of memories had arrived in full force.

“Yeah, I remember your dad and some of the other guys – we had poker night at your old house,” Bobby continued, unaware or flat out ignoring Jo’s awkwardness. “And you came down in your pink frilly nightgown and you started singing… what was it? Some ABBA song, I think.”

“I refuse to admit that happened.” Jo shook her head, her cheeks burning from embarrassment.

“We were laughing our asses of,” Bobby said. “Goddammit, we needed it.”

Jo looked at him again, surprised. His expression had gone somber all of the sudden.

“Yeah, I don’t think your daddy told you this, but we had lost a man a few days before. A good friend. Rufus. Miss that old bastard.” Bobby sighed and continued his story. “So we were just sitting there, playing our cards, drinking our drinks, wondering which one of us was going to be next. And I don’t know, maybe you felt what kind of mood we were in, because suddenly you burst in going: ‘ _Dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen…_ ’”

He sang and even shook his shoulders a little. Jo tried to laugh, but it was hard to ignore the undercurrent sadness of the story

“I don’t think we had laughed that hard in ages,” Bobby continued. “I don’t think any of us thought we were going to laugh again, at all, and you proved us wrong. And then your momma came down to get you into bed again, and you ran around the table and we laughed even harder. It was… we needed that,” he repeated, as if that was the only explanation of why he was remembering all that. “Bill said you were going to be an artist when you grew up.”

“We used to sing in the car,” Jo remembered all of the sudden. It was something she hadn’t thought about in ages. “When he drove me to school, or wherever we went, we put the music on and we sang. If we were in a road trip, we drove mom crazy because she wanted to sleep but we wouldn’t stop singing.”

Bobby chuckled at that information, as if he could imagine exactly the kind of arguments that would have led to.

“You had real talent,” he continued. “You even took classes for a while, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” Jo scratched her arm. “But uh, you know… mom said I should focus on an actual career.”

“She was probably right,” Bobby agreed. “Momma knows best, after all.”

“I guess so,” Jo said.

She didn’t mean to sound like such a downer, but… her fifteen year old self would be ashamed of her. She would be horrified to see how she had dropped music and concentrated on studying something she hated and dating boys who were assholes to her. The dreams of going to Hollywood and starting a music career and all those things she had put on the backburner, thinking that she could do them at some point.

She almost wanted to laugh. She was twenty two years old, turning thirty three in a couple of months, and she was already having an existential crisis.

But whatever she was feeling, it was nothing compared to Bobby’s.

“Life’s too short to do something you don’t love,” he commented. “When you lose as many friends as I have, you start considering all of your options, you know? You start appreciating the small things, because you don’t know how much they’re going to last.”

He stopped talking, staring into his half-empty mug. Jo pushed her own feelings aside and bumped her shoulder into his with a smile.

“Oh, don’t talk like that, old geezer. I’m sure you’ll be kicking around for many years to come still.”

“Why would you wish that on me?” Bobby grumbled and Jo laughed at his bad mood.

They watched Scrooge sing about honoring Christmas in his heart and laughed at how incredibly sappy the music was. They needed it after having such a heavy conversation.

After a few moments, Ellen came back and announced that the dinner was served and they could come to the table whenever they wanted. Jo noticed she had reapplied make-up because her eyeliner was brown instead of black, but made no comment about it.

They ate until they were full and then exchanged gifts. Jo got a new scarf from her mom and a book from Bobby (because he was such a bibliophile of course it was the best gift he could imagine giving), but Bobby was far more excited about his own book.

“How did you know?” he asked Ellen, as he stared at it with a beam and opened the pages as if he couldn’t wait to read it.

“Well, you mentioned it, and I just thought you’d like it,” Ellen replied, while her cheeks turned deep red. “Just, you know… oh, you’re welcome, you fool.”

One thing was for sure: it was immensely funny to see her mother acting like a teenager with a crush. And the best part was that Bobby was crushing right back, because his gift for her was definitely not a book.

“Oh, Bobby, no,” she muttered as she picked the necklace with a round silver tear as a pendant. “I can’t accept this!”

“Of course you can. It’s a gift and I’m giving it to you,” Bobby stated, matter-of-factly. “There. You’ve accepted it.”

“When am I going to use something like this?” Ellen complained. “I can’t wear it around the bar and I never leave the house…”

“Maybe you should leave the house then,” Jo suggested. “Maybe Bobby can take you somewhere nice for New Year’s Eve.”

It was worth it just to see the look on their faces.

“Don’t be silly, Jo, we’re spending New Year’s Eve together!”

“Wouldn’t want you to leave you out of the celebration, girl…”

“I’m sure I can find some friends to go to a party and get drunk with,” Jo replied, smiling wide at the stink eye her mother threw her way. “Don’t worry about me, mom.”

They insisted some more that they _would never_ and _could never_ and _of course not_. But by the time they got ready to go to bed, Jo had already installed the idea in their heads. Now it was just a matter of waiting for its fruits.

She stood on her room’s doorway while Bobby and Ellen pulled the couch out and Ellen flustered about Bobby having enough pillows and Bobby assuring her he could deal with a stiff neck. And she was happy for them, she really, sincerely was.

So she didn’t know where the wave of sadness that overcame her when she closed her bedroom’s door came from. It was like a punch in the gut, like waking up after a very good dream only to realize the truth was far from it.

She wiped her tears when she heard her phone ring in case it was someone calling her, but it was only a video Dean had sent her.

The camera was a bit shaky, but Jo could still make out a golden lit living room. Emma was standing on her own, wearing a light blue dress and matching ribbon in her hair, looking around a little confused, while Dean’s voice encouraged her:

“Hey, Emma, Emma. Where’s Nana? Can you find Nana?”

Emma looked around and fixed her eyes a woman with short black hair (Dean’s mother-in-law, Jo deduced), kneeling on the carpet just a few steps ahead and stretching her hands towards her expectantly. Emma took a few hesitating steps, all on her own, with no one holding her. Jo let out a squeal as Emma fell into her grandmother’s arms. There was cheering and clapping from whoever was also at the reunion, while Nana picked Emma up, the biggest grin on her face. Emma seemed to realize she had done something good, because she also smiled shyly at the camera, before hiding her face into her grandmother’s shoulder.

“I am sending this to _everyone_!” Dean’s voice said right before the video ended.

And that was probably what he had done: he marked all the contacts in his phone indiscriminately, so Jo wouldn’t be surprised his boss or his clients also received that random video of a toddler taking her first steps.

But as Jo sat down on her bed and wiped her tears, she realized suddenly why she felt so blue.

After ten years of mourning her husband, Ellen was moving on, even if she didn’t realize it yet. Her friends would be graduating from the career she had dropped out of eventually. Even Emma was growing up fast and Dean wouldn’t need her in the long run, except maybe for exceptional occasions.

Meanwhile, she was stuck. She had known she’d be stuck and paralyzed for a while after making the “very stupid”, “very rush” and “not really thought-out decision” (among other things she had been told) to stop going to college. But she hadn’t imagined it would be like this at all.

She hadn’t imagined the doubt and the uncertainty gnawing at her. She hadn’t thought she’d be growing increasingly desperate and lost.

Bobby and Ellen had gone quiet on the living room, but there was no way she was getting any sleep. She also didn’t want to pick up her father’s tapes from underneath her bed. She had thought about him too much already that Christmas, and it would be too harsh, too raw.

So instead, she did what she always did when sleep escaped her: she grabbed her computer and turned it on to waste her time in the mindless world that was the Internet. She even had some series she needed to finish watching, so she could definitely do that until her eyelids were too heavy for her to keep open.

But she ended up doing something that seemed small at the time, but that would be, in the long run, the solution to her small crisis. She opened Facebook.

There was an invitation to a New Year’s party sent by her friend Ash. He had been part of Jo’s garage band back when she had a garage, and a band, but they hadn’t really talked since graduation. He left comments on her pictures now and then, always along the lines of “Rock on!” and “Looking fly!” and posted cringe inducing things about pot legalization. She supposed this party was big enough that he had basically done the same thing as Dean and extended a blank invitation to everyone in his friends list.

And after stating to her mother that she would find somewhere to go on New Year’s Day, Jo might as well accept it.

Afterwards, she leaned back on her pillows and wondered what sort of New Year’s resolutions someone like Ash did. He was always so calm and chill about everything that she figured he didn’t care much for those things. He knew everything would work out in the end. Somehow.

Maybe she should be more like Ash and let the resolutions for people who had some goals to accomplish.

Or maybe she should find a single, big goal and stick with it throughout the year.


	8. Chapter 8

Dean’s New Year resolution was very simple: be a good dad for Emma, be a good brother for Sam, do his damn job. Maybe lose some weight, he added as he looked at the tummy that had started protruding over his boxers’ waistband.

But in general, he didn't ask much of life that year. His and Emma's birthdays were coming over, and with it, the first year anniversary of Lydia's death.

He took out her portrait from the drawer next to his bed (their bed) where he kept it and put on the night table to stare at it for a while. He particularly liked that picture of her: she was smiling and radiant on their wedding day. She held the bouquet close to her chest with one hand and toyed with the flowers in her dark blonde hair with the other. She didn't look like a model bride from one of the catalogs her mother and cousins had flooded her with to get her to choose her dress, but in Dean's opinion, she beat them all by far.

Sometimes, when he felt very lonely, he talked to her. He told her about Emma, about how fast she was growing and how much more she looked like her every day. He told her about Sam and Jess' wedding and how all the details were falling into place, he told her about the scarce nights when his friends convinced him to go out for beers and bowling, like in the old days of college.

It had got easier with time. The first few times, he had burst into tears every few sentences, but now the spontaneous waterfalls were receding more and more. And he could talk to her again like he always did.

"We actually talked a lot about this with Madeleine," he said. "Can you imagine that? I'm actually having polite conversations with your mother. Anyways, she's going to be over here for Emma's birthday. We talked about taking her to your... to visit you. But she says it's too soon. That we should wait until Emma's old enough to understand why we're taking her there. I told her she was right. So there, we're actually capable of compromising and reaching agreements. Like civilized people. You wouldn't believe it if you'd seen it."

He chuckled, and he could almost imagine Lydia doing the same thing.

"Can't believe it's been almost a year," he muttered. "I miss you, baby."

Emma woke up in her room and started making sounds on the baby monitor. Dean put away Lydia's portrait and when to check on their daughter.

 

* * *

 

 

Emma's first birthday was basically an adult's party, in the least fun sense of the world. Sam, Jess, Castiel and Meg showed up with presents for her, and so did Benny sans his wife.

"We just had another fight this morning," Benny sighed when Dean asked about Andrea. "I don't know what to tell you, brotha', she's... yeah, I don't know. Do you think maybe I can have a beer?"

He was slurring a little and Dean imagined he'd already had a couple before showing up.

"Sorry, man, Madeleine's here," he said. "You know how she is... it's best if we're all on our best behavior."

"Gotcha."

Truth was, Dean could imagine what the reason for Andrea to be so angry those days was, but he figured he'd bring up Benny's alcohol intake at another moment. Now it was Emma's day and that was what he needed to focus on.

"Emma, come on, don't run!" Jess said, as she chased after her. "Come on, come here!"

It was amazing the way Emma could outrun her so easily when she had only started walking a month before, but Dean knew and had traced her patterns for running around the living room.

"Woah there!" he said, fishing her up when she almost ran past him. "Where are you going so fast?"

Emma laughed with her still very white and small teeth and put her hands on Dean's face.

"Da-da!" she exclaimed, excitedly. She was probably wondering what were all those people doing there, and why did Jess have a hat in her hand that she was so dead-set on putting on her.

"Come on, birthday girl, let Auntie do the thing," he said, leaning her over a little so Jess could do it. "There you go!"

The hat actually looked enormous over her head. Emma felt it up like she wasn't sure what it was, but she soon forgot she had it on when Jess took out her cellphone to snap a picture of her. Dean figured he had no one to blame but himself that Emma knew what a camera was and what she was supposed to do when looking at it.

"So cute!" Jess exclaimed, as she showed Dean the results. "You're going to be a model, aren't you?"

"Like hell," Madeleine interrupted, coming out of the kitchen with a flour stain apron. "I'm not letting my granddaughter turn into one of those airheaded..."

“Do you need anything, Madeleine?”

Madeleine was a career woman. Lydia had told him as much: growing up, Madeleine had always been too busy to cook dinner or take her shopping or train the soccer team, as other moms did. Lydia never blamed her for it, but it broke Dean’s heart to think that she wanted to be the kind of mom who was there for Emma and never got to do it.

And Madeleine apparently had the same line of thought, because she had insisted on baking Emma’s birthday cake. Dean knew it was better to get out of her way when she had something in mind, so he had left her alone in the kitchen and worried about his friends, expecting a mild crisis to arise at any minute.

The mild crisis had arrived.

“I can’t seem to find a… well, I think your oven is broken.”

Dean knew for a fact that the oven wasn’t broken, but he still followed her into the kitchen.

“You have to hold it for a little while so it stays on,” he explained to her. “And you also have to preheat it before you put the cake in.”

“I knew that,” Madeleine groaned. She went back to stirring the mix, apparently out of pure frustration.

“You’re doing great, Maddie,” Dean told her, patting her in the back. “I’m sure Emma will love it.”

“Thank you.” Madeleine raised her chin with pride. “Don’t call me Maddie.”

Dean immediately removed his hand from her shoulder. They had been so amicable with each other for the past year he’d almost forgotten Madeleine hated him. It didn’t mattered he had a high-paid job, that he had brought Lydia that beautiful house in the suburbs and that he had treated with reverence while she was alive, Dean still hadn’t been good enough in Madeleine’s eyes.

“Don’t take it personally,” Lydia had laughed when he’d brought it up. “She wouldn’t think you’re good enough even if you were the President of the United States.”

“Good to know.”

Madeleine might have been a cold, distant, type A businesswoman, but the past Christmas, around Emma, while she held Emma, while she helped her unwrap her presents and when Emma had walked towards her, she had simply been “Nana”. And she was trying to keep that idea alive, because baking a cake for their granddaughter’s birthday was a thing grandmother’s did, even if she had no idea how to turn on the oven.

It was cute. Dean would have confessed to war crimes he didn’t commit and his company’s trade secrets under torture before calling Madeleine cute to her face, but he could still think it.

“Well, if that is all you need me for…”

“Actually, it’s not,” Madeleine said, pouring the mix into the mold. “I was going to ask you if you could request the girl who cares for Emma to come a little bit earlier.”

“Jo always comes on time,” Dean said. Well, except for that one time. He smiled to himself. “Don’t worry, we’ll have plenty of time to go to the grav… to visit Lydia before your plane leaves.”

“Yes, I know you’ve organized it all very well.” Madeleine shrugged, and coming from her, it might as well have been a downright compliment. “But that’s not the reason. I wish to meet her.”

“You… want to… what?” Dean asked, frowning. Why would she want that? Was she going to fight her? Jo was a short, tiny girl who mostly wore sneakers or sandals and Madeleine was an Amazon in pantsuits and high heels. It just didn’t seem fair.

“I just want to know what kind of person she is,” Madeleine explained, as if that clarify things. “When Emma was younger, it didn’t matter as much, as long as she was careful and took proper care of her. Now that she’s growing up and more aware of the people around her… well, you have to watch out for bad influences, Dean.”

“Jo’s not… she’s a really sweet girl,” Dean tried to defend her. “Emma loves her…”

“Exactly. Lydia also developed good relationships with most of her nannies,” Madeleine continued. “You knew her. She was a charismatic girl, she made friends with everybody. So, these girls had to go through an extreme vetting process before I approved of them.”

“That sounds like a bad immigration plan, not basis for hiring someone,” Dean commented.

“And yet you wouldn’t believe how well it worked.” Madeleine smiled at him with her raw of perfectly lined teeth. “After we fired the girl who sneaked horrible mystery novels into the house, Lydia stopped having nightmares. Same happened with her… ahem, indiscreet questions once we fired the girl who read pink novels. Very inappropriate. Why are you making that face?”

“I’m trying not to laugh,” Dean confessed.

Madeleine let out a huff and pushed the mold into the oven.

“Oh, I know what you must think of me,” she commented. “I know Lydia thought I was too controlling, too paranoid, that I wanted her to be perfect, but that just wasn’t true. I merely always wanted what was best for her.”

“I know that, Madeleine,” Dean said. He opened the cupboard and took out the paper napkins. He left them over the counter and pretended to be busy looking at the yard through the glass door while Madeleine wiped her eyes. “Lydia didn’t think ill of you. Never. She admired you very much.”

“Yes, well. We worked on our differences over time,” Madeleine admitted. “But the bottom line is, I would feel much better after I’ve met this… what’s her name again?”

“Jo.”

“Short for?”

“Joanna… I… I think. Yeah, Joanna,” Dean nodded. That was what Jo’s mother called her when she was angry, according to her.

“Surname?”

“Are you going to try get records on her or something?”

“Do you want me to?” Madeleine crooked a perfectly contoured eyebrow. “Because I have some people…”

“Okay, look,” Dean raised his hands to stop her from talking. “I’ll warn her you want to meet her…”

“Oh, don’t bother. It’s much better when they’re off guard.”

“… but I draw the line at hiring a private detective and have her investigated,” he continued, pretending he hadn’t heard that last quip. “So… please don’t do that.”

It was a useless plea if Madeleine decided to go ahead anyway, but she seemed to agree with a sigh.

“Fine. Now, go entertain your guests.”

She opened her purse and took out a little make up mirror to fix the eyeliner that ad smudged with the tears. Dean lowered the oven’s heat without her noticing and walked out of the kitchen.

Sam, Jess and Benny were on the couch, laughing at something. Dean swept the room with his eyes and immediately registered the fact Emma wasn’t with them. He found her on the living room, sitting on Castiel’s lap and trying to solve the four-piece jigsaw puzzle he and Meg had brought for her.

“Now you put it in there… Emma, you need to make the pieces fit,” he was trying to explain to her, but Emma seemed much more interested in trying to chew it instead. “Come on, Emma. Don’t you want to see the pretty flower completed?”

“Told you we should have bought the kitten one,” Meg commented. She had an elbow on the table and was leaning against the palm of her hand. But she didn’t look bored at all: there was a small smirk in her lips that wasn’t like her usual mocking one. She actually seemed… happy. Dean stroke that in his head, because he didn’t think Meg was capable of such a positive emotion. Content was more like it.

“It’s too much pressure to put on her at such a young age,” Castiel protested. “We’d be unfairly influencing her to have a preference for cats when she grows up, and what if she inherits Dean’s allergies?”

“She could be allergic to pollen,” Meg pointed out. Castiel looked down at the flower with horror, like he hadn’t considered that possibility. “Oh, hey, look!”

Emma finally realized that the piece of the puzzle wasn’t as tasty as it looked and clumsily pushed it against the other pieces. Meg and Castiel actually cheered.

“Well done, Emma!”

“Not too shabby for a crying baby, huh?” Meg said, extending a hand towards Emma, obviously expecting her to high-five her. Instead, Emma grabbed her finger and pulled her closer to her. “Okay, don’t… stop that…”

“She seems to like you,” Castiel commented.

“Trust me, it’s through no fault of my own.”

They stayed in silence for a few seconds, both watching Emma let go of Meg’s hand only to start disassembling the puzzle again. Dean was about to interrupt them when he heard something awkward, something he knew he had no business hearing.

“I want one,” Castiel whispered.

“I know,” Meg sighed.

They leaned their foreheads against one another and stayed very quiet.

It sounded like the conclusion to a conversation they’d had several times before. And suddenly, Dean felt the impulse to be back in the kitchen with Madeleine, because no matter what, he was pretty certain Madeleine wasn’t going to surprise him. He wasn't going to find anything entirely all too personal about her and he wasn't going to get the impression he could no longer looked her in the eye and playfully insult her spouse. Or her. Or feel like an asshole for ever doing such a thing.

But he supposed there was no turning back now. He stepped backwards and then walked into the living room again, making sure to stomp on the hardwood floor so that Meg and Castiel had time to hear him and pretend everything was alright.

"There you are," he said, stretching his hands towards Emma. Immediately, his daughter hooked her arms around his neck and let him pick her up from Castiel's lap. "Hope she's not giving you any trouble."

"No, not at all," Castiel assured him, with a smile. "She's a very good girl."

"That she is," Dean replied. "So listen, I'm making coffee to go with Madeleine's cake, and that's going to be ready soon, so if you guys want to come to the living room..."

"What, no party games?" Meg asked. "I thought you were bringing a clown. But I guess that'd be redundant, given you're already here."

"You know what, you're... not a nice person, Meg," Dean groaned.

"Is that the best you got? Woah, paternity sure softened you up, beefcake."

Dean bit his tongue and let her have that one.

Madeleine presented the cake with extreme pride when it was ready and carefully planted a single candle right in the middle of it. They clapped and sang happy birthday while Emma smiled at everybody. She seemed to know that whatever was going on there, it was all about her and she relished on the attention. So perhaps she was going to grow up to be a model. Or an actress or a rockstar. A renowned college professor or a successful lawyer like Uncle Sam or a CEO like Nana. Or President of the United States, why the fuck not?

"I know you're too young to understand this," he told to the camera that Jess held up so everybody could leave messages for Emma that she could watch when she grow up. "But I want to give you the world, because that's what you deserve. I love you, baby girl, and may this be the first of many happy years."

He kissed Emma on the forehead and everybody awed and clapped. Everybody left well-wishing messages (except Meg, because she didn't do sap so she just let Castiel do the talking) and then they ate the cake. Which was surprisingly good. Maybe Madeleine could be a typical grandmother after all.

Benny was the first to leave, after receiving a series of increasingly insistent messages from Andrea on his phone.

"She probably thinks I'm dead drunk on a ditch somewhere," he commented as Dean gave him his coat and accompanied to the door.

"Yeah... call me when you get home, okay?" Dean asked.

"What are we? Eighteen?" Benny complained. "I won't, brotha'. The missus' probably getting ready to give me an earful. So... still up for bowling this Saturday?"

Dean confirmed they were, gave his friend a quick hug and sent him on his way. Afterwards, it wasn't long until Meg found an excuse for her and Castiel to leave.

"She wants to go to bed early," Castiel explained, while they waited for Meg to finish saying her goodbyes to Jess and Sam. "We have an appointment tomorrow and we can't miss it."

"What kind of appointment?" Dean asked, frowning.

"Well, we've been trying to conceive for a while and nothing's happening. So we've decided to talk with a fertility clinic to check if everything is working... I shouldn't be telling you this. Please, don't tell Meg I told you this."

"Since when do I tell Meg anything?" Dean laughed. "Don't worry, man. Hope everything goes okay."

"Let's bail, Clarence," Meg said. Castiel diligently held her coat for her and helped her put it on. "Squirrel."

"Meg," Dean replied.

Meg clicked her tongue, as she was expecting more banter from him than that, but ultimately, she waved her hand and walked out with Castiel following suit.

Sam and Jess came to the door arguing about the wedding. Because of course they were.

"I really don't see the point..."

"Dean, tell Jo we will pay her to sing at our wedding," Jess said, point blank before Sam could interrupt her. "Or to get a friend that can sing at our wedding. I really don't care at this point."

"That isn't necessary," Sam huffed, in the tone he used when he was tired of arguing the same thing over and over again. "Dean, please, don't bother Jo. We can totally still find a band to perform..."

"Maybe she... knows someone," Dean suggested. He didn't know when keeping the peace became part of his best man duties, but there they were. "I'll ask her."

"Thank you," Jess sighed. She didn't wait for Sam to hold her coat: she put it on and walked out by herself.

"Getting cold feet, there, little brother?" Dean tried to joke.

"She's the love of my life and I want to spend the rest of my life with her," Sam said, like he was reciting a mantra.

"You keep that in mind," Dean approved. Honestly, maybe Sam just needed a couple of Amazons to plan the entire thing for him.

Madeleine lingered for as long as it took her Über to get there. Dean had offered her to stay in the guest's room out of courtesy and Madeleine had very cordially declined and chose to stay in a hotel for the few days she was going to spend there. It was the best decision for everybody's sanity, undoubtedly.

"She’s a little tired," she said, as he placed Emma back in Dean's arms. "So please, get her to bed soon."

Instead of answering that he knew damn well when his daughter was sleepy (and it didn't take a genius to decipher that, Emma kept yawning and rubbing her little eyes), Dean smiled and promised he would.

"Say bye, bye to Nana, Emma!"

Emma still found the energy to wave her hand and half-heartedly mutter: "Bah-bah!"

And then, finally, they were alone.

Dean didn't let exhaustion get the best of him: he bathed Emma, dressed her in her ducky pajamas and gently laid her down on the crib.

"Remember the first night we were here?" he asked her, pushing the mobile so the bees would start circling above her. "You were so small I was afraid I was going to break you. You wouldn't stop crying until I started singing to you."

_And anytime you feel pain, hey Jude, refrain_

_Don't carry the world upon your shoulders_

_For well you now that it's a fool who plays it cool_

_By making his world a little colder..._

He hadn't even finished the verse when Emma was sound asleep. He placed a kiss on her cheek as he used to and he went to pass out in his bed and not think about the day he had ahead.

 

* * *

 

The garden was frosted and there was a strange woman in a black pantsuit standing by the door, apparently about to knock. Jo noticed both of those things when she exited the car, and for some reason, her brain connected the two facts vaguely, like that woman had brought the snow and the cold with her. Her gaze seemed cold enough to freeze hell, though.

"Good morning," she said, squaring her shoulders.

"Uh... hi," Jo muttered, unsure as to why she felt she was being intensely judged. She climbed the three steps and stood in front of the woman, who stood several inches taller than her.

"I'm Madeleine Xífos," the woman introduced herself, extending a hand towards Jo. Her shake was bone crushing. "I'm Emma's grandmother."

"Oh, yes. Dean mentioned you'd be visiting," Jo remembered. "Hi, I'm Jo. I'm the... babysitter."

"Yes," Madeleine said. Her voice crackled like ice, so maybe she was the Snow White Queen after all. She rang the doorbell with a nail so long Jo wondered how she got anything done at all. Also, had she been waiting for Jo to arrive to call?

Dean opened the door, smiling friendly as usual and with the baby monitor in hand, but when he saw the two standing there, his face decayed a little.

"Oh," he muttered, closing his eyes. "Sorry, Madeleine. I totally forgot."

He forgot his mother-in-law was coming over? No wonder she looked so uptight.

"It's no matter, Dean," she replied, with a tone of voice that indicated that it was absolutely a matter. "I was counting on you forgetting, so I took the liberty of showing up a bit early. That way we can begin."

"Begin... with what exactly?" Jo asked, and by the way Dean cringed, she realized it must have had something to do with her.

"I'm going to make sure Emma finishes her breakfast," he said and retreated into the kitchen so fast Jo could have sworn she saw a cloud of dust in his wake.

Madeleine took a seat on the couch, as if she was expecting to stay for a while, even though Dean had told Jo they were only going to the cemetery and coming back soon.

"Now, dear," Madeleine started, shooting her a look that was like blades in her skin. "Do you mind telling me some things about yourself?"

"I don't see what..."

"Do you drink?" Madeleine shot before Jo could protest any further.

"Only at parties," Jo admitted, before realizing that she probably should have outright denied that. But then again, that wouldn't have been entirely believable, so she tried to save face by adding: "Never too much, though. And not a drop when I'm the designated driver, of course."

"Of course," Madeleine said, looking her up and down as if she didn't believe someone would choose Jo to be the designated driver. "Do you go to a lot of parties?"

"Only when I'm invited." Jo left it for Madeleine to figure out what that meant.

"Drugs?"

"No," Jo lied, quicker this time. Of course, she'd had smoked the occasional joint, but she wasn't about to admit it.

"Do you smoke?"

"No, ma'am," she replied, starting to see what that interrogatory was about.

"Really?" Madeleine put her elbow on her knee and placed her chin on her hand, leaning a little forwards as if she was about to prowl over Jo if she lied. Jo remembered the half crocodile, half hippopotamus thing from Egypt that ate your heart in the afterlife. "You never got... curious?"

"Like everybody." Jo shrugged. "But my mom caught one of my friends trying to give me a cigarette in the school’s parking lot and before I could try it, she dragged me into the car and then called my friend's parents."

She omitted to say that Ash had impersonated his own father on the phone (something Ellen could never know) and actually kept Jo from going insane by passing her rock albums when her time outside the house was severely restricted for a couple of months afterwards. Madeleine seemed to get the gist of the story anyway.

"Your mom sounds like a tough woman," she commented. Coming from her, it was a compliment.

"Oh, yes, very tough. But, you know, fair," Jo said. "She kept my nose clean."

"That is a mother's job," Madeleine said. "And what are your plans for the future? Are you going to college?"

Jo hoped her smiled didn't turn into the menacing showing of teeth she actually felt like giving. Did she really have to have this conversation with every one person she met?

"Not right now," she admitted, making it sound like it was something she had put on hold only temporarily. "But some friends and I are starting a project and we think that if we work hard and don't let up, we hope it... will come to fruition," she finished clumsily. She felt like she was giving a job interview again, though Madeleine wouldn't be as forgiving as Dean had been.

"That is the attitude you must have for any project to succeed," Madeleine replied, and for once, Jo thought she saw something similar to approval in her voice. "May I ask what kind of project it is?"

Dean emerged from the kitchen at that exact moment, thank God. Jo was pretty sure she was going to lose whatever little respect (and she was certain it truly was minimum) that Madeleine had acquired for her during that interview had she confessed about her "project" and what it actually consisted on.

"Well, we're full and happy, aren't we?" he commented to Emma, who smiled wide and stretched her hands.

"Jo, Jo, Jo!"

"Emma, Emma, Emma!" Jo parroted back at her while Dean put her in her arms. "How are you, you little monster?"

Emma tried to grab her hat, but she contented to playing with the ball at the end of it.

"Okay, so we're going now," Dean announced.

"If you could give me five more minutes..."

"... and we'll be back in a couple of hours," Dean kept saying, as if he hadn't heard Madeleine's interjection at all. "So, hold the front for us."

"Aye, aye, serge," Jo said, making a mocking military salute. "Give a kiss, Emma."

Emma pouched her lips and made a kissing sound when Dean showed her his cheek.

"And another for Gran..."

"It's Nana," Madeleine corrected Jo as if it was a very serious matter. "Goodbye, Emma."

She pinched her nose and, finally, she and Dean headed for the door.

"What was that all about?" Jo asked. Emma started babbling something, but if it was an explanation about her grandmother's behavior, Jo didn't catch all of it.

 

* * *

 

Lydia's gravestone was in a secluded part of the cemetery. It looked new compared to the ones around it. That made it even sadder if it was possible. The inscription read: "Beloved wife, daughter and mother" and Madeleine had insisted they added a verse from the Bible, even though Lydia hadn't been particularly religious in her life after leaving high school.

"I like the Greek afterlife better," Lydia had told him one time, in the dead of night when they still stayed up after sex talking about the weirdest things. "You drink from a river and forget. It sounds peaceful. And then you come back and you get to do it all over again."

"God, I hope we don't come back," Dean had said, only half-joking. "One life's already kind of shitty, but that you have to do it over and over?"

Lydia had laughed and turned around to face him.

"You think this is shitty?" she'd asked.

They had just come out of college and were living in an apartment that was barely big enough not to be called a refrigerator box. They were both making very low salaries in their brand new jobs and most of Dean’s went to pay back his student loans. Lydia refused to ask her mother for more money. Their heating was broken and that night they’d had to choose between starvation and hypothermia, so they were hogged under several covers and cuddling for warmth.

And yet, Dean would have said no. That moment right there had been one of the least shitty things that had ever happened to him.

"Well, there's nowhere to go but up," he'd said instead. "Maybe next time over we get to live in a mansion."

Lydia had laughed and hidden her face in his neck.

"I hope we're still together the next time over."

They were young and immortal then. Now, Dean really hoped there was a next time over as well.

Madeleine obviously wished there was something more akin to a heaven. The quote she had chosen read: "There the weary are at rest." That was a good thought too.

Dean had been there maybe two times since Lydia passed, once soon after the gravestone was placed and one on their wedding anniversary. He didn't want to go more than that. He felt that if he gave in to grief, he would stay there forever and Emma needed him. Besides, there was nothing here but cold earth and that stupid stone with his wife's name. He paid the cemetery's fee to keep it clean and polished, but only on those occasions he had brought fresh flowers. Daisies. Those were her favorite.

Madeleine cleaned the very little snow that had accumulated on top and placed the flower crown under Lydia's name, hiding the verse. They wouldn't last long in that weather, but that wasn't really the point. She stood by with her hands tightly clasped in front of her. Her eyes were red, but she didn't shed a single tear. Dean almost wished she had, because then, it would have been fine for him to do it as well.

After a few seconds, she let out a shaky breath.

"I like this place," she said. "It's peaceful."

"Yes," Dean agreed.

They stood around until it got too cold, and then, without saying a word, Madeleine signaled them to go back to the car. They didn't speak or turned on the radio until the cemetery was far behind them. It would have felt disrespectful.

"So," Madeleine said when they were nearing the house again. "We need to talk about this girl, Jo."

Dean mentally counted to ten before speaking.

"Look, she's been with me since Emma was three months old. She adores Jo and she doesn't like strangers, so I don't know if Jo made a good impression on you or not, but frankly, finding another babysitter would be a nightmare and..."

"I approve of her," Madeleine said. Dean considered it a small miracle he didn't swerve off the road out of pure shock.

“Oh… you do?”

“Yes. She seems to have a good head over shoulders.”

It had to be a late Christmas miracle. Dean didn’t say a word, in case it broke the spell.

“You can wipe that smile off your face now, Dean,” Madeleine added.

Dean tried.

 

* * *

 

_Help! I need somebody_

_Help! Not just anybody_

_Help! You know I need someone_

_Help!_

Jo as making a little dance and waving the spoon in front of Emma’s face when Dean finally arrived home. The image was so comical that he couldn’t help but to stop on the living room’s doorway and stare at them both for a while. Emma was being stubborn again and shaking her head, no matter how many planes and funny faces Jo made at her.

_Help me if you can, I'm feeling down_

_And I do appreciate you being 'round_

_Help me get my feet back on the ground_

_Won't you please, please… just eat?_

Emma didn’t listen to her pleas, especially when she peered over Jo’s shoulders and saw him.

“Dada!” she exclaimed, extending her little hands towards him.

“No, little lady, I’m not bailing you out of this,” Dean replied, frowning at her. “You’re going to eat your lunch and that’s all.”

“It’s fine,” Jo chuckled. “She ate most of it. She’s just being a grump on principle now we’re almost done.”

Emma looked at them both with a grin that clearly meant: “ _I’m not eating the rest of it and you can’t make me._ ”

“Yeah, this is going to take forever.” Dean shook his head. “Why don’t you go home? I’ll finish with Emma and then I’ll dress her up so we can go drop Nana to the airport.”

“Okay, yeah, sure.” Jo left the spoon on Emma’s plate and stood up. “About… Nana…”

“Oh, no, don’t worry about her,” Dean replied, laughing. He dragged a chair to sit in front of Emma’s throne while Jo stood up. “She’s kind of a control freak, but she’s working on it.”

“That’s good to know,” Jo replied. She stood up and searched around for her coat. It seemed like she wanted to say something else, but she didn’t quite know how to bring it up. She tied her scarf around her neck very slowly and buttoned up her coat one by one, like she didn’t want to miss a single button.

Actually, that suited Dean, because he only then remembered he had another thing to ask her.

“Hey, Dean…”

“So Sam and Jess…”

They both stopped at the same time and chuckled.

“Okay, you go first,” Dean said.

“It’s just… actually, doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it,” she said. She looked incredibly shy standing there, and her coat and hat made her look even shorter than she was. But she smiled as always. “You tell me what you need.”

Dean scratched the back of his neck and decided he had nothing to lose in asking. Wasn’t that what a good best man did, anyway?

“Well, it’s… kind of stupid. Sam and Jess can’t for the life of them find a band for their wedding. They asked me to ask you if you knew of someone who could play or… if you could do it yourself, but I told them…”

“I’ll do it,” Jo interrupted him. Dean was so shocked that for a second or two he wasn’t sure he heard her correctly.

“You… really?”

“Yeah. I met up with the guys of my old band over New Year’s Eve.” As she spoke, her face started lightning up again. “That’s actually what I wanted to ask you. We’re looking around for gigs, but so far we’ve come up empty and I wanted to know…”

“Hey.” Dean chuckled. “Way to be in the same frequency.”

Jo’s awkwardness completely melted away like the frost underneath the sun when she smiled.

“We would love to perform for their wedding,” she said. “I already have Sam’s number, so I’ll let him know we’re available and…”

“You know what? I’ll just give you Jess’ number,” Dean decided. He trusted Sam could eventually get over the fact they hadn’t got an actual professional band and knowing him, he would probably demand to hear Jo and her band in advance to make sure they weren’t horrible. But other than that, Jess probably would manage to convince him it was for the best eventually.

By the time Dean walked her to the door, Jo looked positively elated about the entire prospect.

“I’ll call her when I get home. Do you think she’ll be busy? I know it’s Sunday, but I don’t want to bother her and…”

“I’m sure she’ll be glad to get your call,” Dean replied. He was also smiling a bit. Her enthusiasm was contagious.

“Okay, yeah. I’ll just call her then.”

Before Dean could add anything else, she threw her arms around his neck and held him him very tight for a few seconds. Despite the layers of clothing between the two, Dean could feel Jo’s warm body underneath and the closeness made him feel… weird. Not uncomfortable or anything like that, just weird. He realized it had been a while since someone hugged him like that. He wasn’t a very physical guy when it came to showing affection and his friends knew to keep their distance. But he didn’t want to push Jo away or step back to escape from her arms. He stayed where he was, unable to react. He didn’t even have time to hug her back or say a word before she let go of him.

“Thank you!” she said, before she went away, almost jumping in the porch’s step.

“Yeah, you’re… you’re welcome,” Dean muttered, but Jo was already inside her car and starting the engine.

He closed the door with a sigh and went to check on Emma. She had turned her plate over and was drawing on her high chair’s table with the rest of the puree. Dean picked up the spoon from the floor and grabbed Emma up. He was going to get food all over his face and shirt, but it didn’t matter all that much.

“Did you hear that, baby girl?” he asked her as he carried her to the bathroom to clean her up. “We’re going to a party very soon!”


	9. Chapter 9

The one thing about being an independent rock band (as Ash kept insisting they were, instead of ‘just four friends who played together, can we even be called a band if we haven’t written any songs yet?’ that Charlie insisted was more appropriate) was that they had to do everything themselves.

Everything.

First, they had to overcome their first client’s skepticism.

_> Look, I’m not saying you guys aren’t good or anything, but is there any way we can hear you play or…?_, Sam texted her.

He was too kind to say he outright doubted they were any good, but Jo could understand why he was like that. She sent him a small video they had recorded the previous week of them playing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” (appropriate, since Sam obviously didn’t want them) and a few minutes afterwards, she received another text:

_> Where can I e-mail you the songs list?_

And that was another issue. They only had three months to learn them all. They already had some of them in their repertoire like “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and “I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing” (that one was underlined, so they deduced that was the newlywed’s very special song), but others they just…

“Who wants to hear the Titanic song at a wedding?” Charlie complained when they went over it during their nightly Skype session. “The ship sank and the guy died! How is hat romantic?”

Jo had to agree with her. Her vocal cords were dying of over exhaustion just thinking about it. But since it had been requested, she wasn’t going to give up like that.

“That’s the attitude, girl,” Ash said. He was lying on his back with his guitar on his lap and Jo was eighty percent sure he had been smoking weed. “You’re going to kill it.”

“Of course you are,” Garth added from the other corner of the screen. “We can do anything we put our minds to. So we just need to put our minds to this and it’ll totally work out.”

When challenges like that presented themselves, Jo was glad that her band mates were the way they were. Garth was relentlessly optimistic like that. Ash simply rolled with whatever came his way.

As for Charlie, well…

“We’re going to die,” she muttered, before hiding her face in her arms. They had to spend twenty minutes convincing her that they had nothing to worry about.

Though that might not have been entirely true. Even with them doing their best, they all had day jobs and classes they needed to attend to: Charlie was the IT girl in an important company, Garth was on his last year of pre-dentistry and Ash… no one was completely sure what Ash did. It involved him staying up late at night, having three cellphones and people calling him “Dr. Badass”. Jo figured it was best not to know.

That only left weekends and Skype sessions for them to practice, plus the added compromise that they would practice individually. Luckily, Charlie’s anxiety and absolute fear for failure, once overcome, translated itself in color-coded Excel sheets that marked exactly how much time they had to learn each song and how much she expected them to get out of the few weekends when they could work together.

“The red marks the amount of estimated songs that we need to master for the wedding, which are the ones atop of the list,” she explained. “The yellow ones are the time we have to cover during the reception, unless someone asks for an encore, but if not, I included some we already know just in case. And the green ones is the ideal time we have to learn the songs, meaning if you want to go above and beyond that and, you know, do some good for my nerves, you might as well put on the extra effort and learn those as well.”

“Uh… Charlie, I have exams,” Garth reminded her.

“I know. I also made you a study schedule,” Charlie replied.

Garth’s face lit up in the screen when Charlie transferred the file. “Oh, neat! You know, if you weren’t a raging lesbian, I’ll probably marry you.”

“Thanks. I’m not a raging lesbian, though, I’m just a panicking one.”

“You don’t have to panic, okay?” Jo told her. “I’m sure it’ll be just fine.”

It was easier for her to say it, though. Charlie and Garth couldn’t take their instruments to work and practice there, but Jo could sing and memorize the notes and lyrics while she fed Emma or watched her play with her toys or took her grocery shopping.

_And through it all_

_She offers me protection_

_A love of lot and affection_

_Whether I’m right or wrong…_

Emma looked at her and babbled, perhaps trying to imitate the words Jo formed in her mouth or perhaps following the shining of the cans Jo put in the cart.

“Your aunt and uncle sure love ballads, huh?” she told the baby. “Don’t worry, we’re going to sprinkle some really nice songs through it all so you can dance all night long, yes?”

“Yeah,” Emma said, although Jo was pretty sure that she had no idea what she’d just told her.

“How about…?”

_Turn it down, you say?_

_Well, I gotta say to you is time and time again no!_

_No, no, no, no…_

Emma smiled and started bobbing her head up and down, imitating what Jo did. She was going to be a little punk one day if she and Dean kept raising her on a steady diet of rock and roll music.

Well… she wasn’t raising her _with_ Dean, she was just helping and of course it wasn’t like…

“You have a really nice voice.”

Jo startled. She had been so busy entertaining Emma and trying to collect her wandering thoughts about her nine years older, widower boss that she hadn’t realized there was people around listening to her.

“Oh… uh, thanks,” she said, smiling at the shop’s employee who was standing on the other side of the aisle, leaning over a mop he obviously wasn’t using. A little self-conscious now, Jo pushed the cart to walk past him, but he didn’t get the memo that was the end of the conversation.

“You live around?” he asked. “I always see you come here with your daughter…”

“She’s not my daughter,” Jo said and she knew right away that he was new. Every other employee in the store had learnt by now that she was Emma’s babysitter.

“Oh, okay, sorry. I just… just wanted to say I liked your voice. Sorry.” He blushed and started moping the floor with energy, almost like he was mentally beating himself with it.

Jo still stopped to look at him. He had dark brown hair and blue eyes, with high cheeks and very long limbs. He couldn’t be more than a couple of years younger than her. This was probably his first job and clearly, he still had a lot to learn.

“You shouldn’t flirt with the clients,” Jo told him.

That flustered him even more, to the point he was about to crash his mop on the shelf.

“Flirting? Who-who said anything about flirting? I wasn’t flirting,” he stammered, which clearly indicated he was flirting and now he was mortified that Jo had called him out for it.

“It’s fine,” she said, shrugging. “Just, uh… you know one of them might chew your head off if you try it. Not everyone is as nice as me.”

He stood up straight, his shoulders slowly relaxing as he realized Jo had no intention of telling on him to his boss.

“Thanks,” he muttered. “I won’t try it again. I’m not very good at it. Obviously.”

Jo smiled at him and suddenly she realized it had been almost a year since she both broke up with her boyfriend and dropped out of college. And in that entire time, she hadn’t gone out on a date or even got someone’s number. She hadn’t even found someone to sloppily make out in Ash’s New Year party at midnight and not because there weren’t any cute boys there. Valentine's Day had been the week before and she had spent it eating cheese puffs in the sofa and listening to her mother having a long conversation on the phone with Bobby.

She had just been… too busy to date.

And this wasn’t exactly a golden opportunity to jump back on the horse or anything of the sort. It was highly unprofessional, they were both technically on the clock and Emma would get restless if they stayed still in one place for too long. The fun in shopping was that she got to slide on the cart, not that Jo would stop around and clarify to every single person that they weren’t related.

“Yeah, you might need some practice,” Jo said simply, her eyes travelling down to his name tag. “Alfie.”

“Fun story, I’m not actually Alfie,” the boy said, scratching the back of his neck. “This is the tag from the guy before me and when they hired me, they didn’t have one with my name, so… I’m using this one until mine arrives.”

“Ah, so that’s why you can get away with flirting with the clients,” Jo said, crooking an eyebrow. “They won’t know your name to tell on you.”

“I guess you could see it like that. I’m like… a double agent. Or something like that,” he concluded, staring at his shoes again when he realized the words coming out of his mouth. “Sorry, that was lame.”

It was actually kind of adorable, but Jo wasn’t about to tell him that.

“So what is your name, then?”

Apparently it was a good sign that Jo hadn’t run away by this point, because his cheeky attitude return.

“How about I tell you mine and you tell me yours?”

“Nice try,” Jo congratulated him. She gabbed what she had been looking for and put it on the cart before pushing it past him.

“I’ll settle for a number!” he tried.

“Keep moping, Alfie, I think you missed a spot.”

She didn’t turn to look behind until she was almost by the tills. Alfie was moping the floor again, but he no longer looked like he was going to run away if someone even talked to him. Jo paid for her items and picked Emma up from the cart, thinking perhaps next time she would find an excuse to stick around and talk for longer.

She sang “Call Me Maybe” all the way back to the house. Not because it was part of the wedding’s song list.

In any case, between one thing and the other, she barely had time to even think about dating. The weeks flew and before she knew it, she and Charlie were trying on dresses for the party and trying to convince Ash and Garth that yes, the suit and tie was absolutely necessary.

“Nobody is going to be looking at us,” Ash complained while they fitted the jacket on him. “Why do we even have to buy this thing?”

“You can rent it,” the store’s clerk said, shrugging. “But if you spill something on it, you have to pay extra. Or buy it.”

Ash looked at himself in the mirror with desperation, perhaps thinking that he didn’t know if he would be capable of accepting such a responsibility.

“Do we have something a little more informal?” she asked the clerk. “I don’t think this goes well with my hair.”

“He could always buzz it off,” Charlie suggested.

“How dare you!” Ash exclaimed, placing his hands on his head protectively. “The mullet is what makes Dr. Badass a badass. It’s like I don’t even know you anymore, Charlene!”

“What are you guys laughing out?” Garth asked when he walked out of the changing room.

“Nothing, nothing,” Jo replied, trying to keep her chuckles under control. "Doesn't matter. Show us what you got there, Garth."

Unlike Ash, Garth seemed incredibly proud of his outfit and didn't even complain once that it was itchy. He made a little swirl and smoothed out the lapels of his jacket.

"I look good," he said.

Charlie caressed her chin, like she was thinking of something very complicated and then signaled the clerk for help.

"Do you have one of those in size extra small?"

And so it was decided that only Jo would wear a violet dress to the reception. Ash proposed he could wear the dress and Jo the suit, and he wouldn't be dissuaded until they pointed out he would need to wax his legs to pull it off.

"We should make a photo op," Charlie suggested when they all looked at each other in the store's full body mirrors. "Find ourselves a street to cross in order. You know, Abbey Road style."

"Jo should go first, because she's totally John Lennon," Garth pointed out immediately.

"How dare you. I am Sir McCartney, all the way," Jo protested.

"You mean you're dead and secretly replaced by a body double?" Ash asked, blinking at her.

They must have looked like four complete loons laughing as hard as they did while they left the store, but it was really hard to care. Jo hadn't realized how much she'd missed them until they were together and playing again, preparing a new project, making new plans and dreaming like they had eight years before when they were fifteen and the world hadn't beaten them down yet.

They all seemed to realize that, because as they were eating their burgers in a restaurant nearby, an awkward exchange of glances occurred on the table when Garth asked what would happen in the foreseeable future.

"I mean, I know we talked about finding other events and playing at birthdays and bar mitzvahs and all that," he said. "And that's fine and I can always use the extra cash, but what about, you know, our songs?"

"We haven’t written any songs," Charlie pointed out.

"Yeah, we had," Ash replied. "Jo wrote some."

"We were in high school and they were horrible," Jo protested. "I'm sure I can do much better now."

She went quiet, only then realizing what she was saying: that they were going to write more and they were going to do more than just parties and events. That they could get something out of that other than the satisfaction of spending time together and having an artistic outlet in their otherwise normal lives.

The insinuation didn't go unnoticed. They all looked at each other in uncomfortable silence, because none of them was going to say: _'Yeah, we're going to Hollywood and we're going to take the scene by storm!_ ' with the same confidence that they'd had when they were teenagers. Even if they did want to say it.

Ash was the first to speak out after several minutes.

"You guys remember back then when I was worried we were going to sell out one day?"

"Yeah, I never understood that. How were we supposed to sell out if nobody was buying?"

"Well, we don't have to do that to succeed now," Ash said, as if he hadn't even heard Charlie's protest. "We could totally set up a crowd funding. I have a couple of friends who have bars and of course, Jo's mom has one..."

"I don't really think my mom's cop bar is the best place to play very loud rock music," Jo said, but Ash was inspired. He leaned over and kept talking as if nothing at all could get in the way of his very clear plan:

"... we could make ourselves a name in the local scene and when we have enough money to rent a recording studio or maybe a small label will take an interest. You know, it doesn't have to be fancy or anything. It just has to be enough that we can record an album and then we can hit the road..."

"Woah, woah, Ash, slow down," Garth told him. He now looked a bit scared, wide-eyed and shaken, as if he hadn't considered Ash actually had an answer to his question. "I have college and student loans, dude. I can't just drop everything to go on tour or whatever is it that you're proposing."

"Nah, man, I'm not saying we should do it right now," Ash replied. "I'm just saying it's not impossible."

They went silent again. The scenario Ash was presenting them was a bit overwhelming. They had abandoned their dreams about being a famous rock band right after graduating, when they realized they were going to different colleges, to study different things and work in different fields. Garth had chosen pre-dentistry because everyone in his family was a dentist. Charlie was a genius who played both the guitar and the keyboard and she could have literally picked anything she wanted to do but had decided to be a computer programmer. Ash was the only one who had staunchly refused to stop being what he had been while he was a teenager and now he was presenting them with a plan like that, it sounded like he knew all along they would eventually orbit back to the band. Like he had been waiting for them to realize that music was what made them really happy and now it was up to them to take the next step. But he wasn’t pressing them. He was just saying, with that perennial chill attitude of his.

And in a way, he was right. Jo had dropped college because she was miserable there and the fighting with her ex had been the straw that broke the camel's back. Charlie complained about her job almost nonstop if they let her and Garth made a lot of jokes about how fun it was to pull teeth from skulls, but they didn't sound entirely sincere.

And Ash was just putting it out there that what they had chosen to do wasn't the end of it. That they were still on time to change their minds and give their irrational teenage dream another chance.

Jo spoke first, because she had been the first to realize her life wasn't turning out the way she wanted it and had jumped ship even before knowing there was some alternative for her out there.

"Look, if we're going to do this – and I'm not saying we are," she clarified before Ash could get his hopes up. "But if we do, we should keep in mind everything that could go wrong."

"Oh, make a risk assessment, yes," Charlie said, relief that this was something they could reduce to one of her Excel sheets. "We would have to calculate the monetary cost, the time investment..."

"My question is," Jo cut her off. "Do we really have anything to lose if we give it a try?"

Nobody had anything to answer to that. They ended the lunch with the impression perhaps it wasn't such a bad idea after all.

 

* * *

 

The wedding's weekend was... it was messy. To say the least.

Jo forgot to put her alarm clock, so when she was rudely woken up by a call, she didn't react very well:

"What?!"

"We're downstairs," Charlie's voice said on the other end. "Where are you? We have to go."

"Go where?" Jo muttered groggily, because it was fucking seven in the morning if her clock was to be believed, on a Saturday morning and even though Dean had come home early and told her to go, she'd still spent part of the night rehearsing some of the songs she wasn't too sure about for the wedding...

The wedding. Oh, shit, shit, shit!

"Mom, why didn't you wake me up?" she asked as she sprinted towards the bathroom.

Ellen didn't give her an answer, so Jo jumped into the shower, mentally counting the seconds she spent there, brushing her teeth under the hot water stream to save time and then immediately diving back out to her room to fish her bag. She was lucky she didn't have to carry any equipment with her, but she would totally have to make her warming up exercises on the way there.

"Where's the fire, kiddo?" Ellen asked when Jo passed like a flash through the kitchen. "Come on, you have time for breakfast..."

"No, I really don't," Jo replied, looking around for a banana or an apple or something she could carry with her so she wouldn't pass out from starvation. "We have to be there by eight..."

Ellen's face contorted with panic and understanding.

"I thought you said eight thirty!" she said. Well, that explained it. “Go, run, now!”

Jo ran out of the bar and into Ash's van (when, how and why he had got a van was one of those question it was best left unanswered) and she practically choked on the banana when he accelerated so fast they were lucky they didn't ram into other cars.

"What took you so long?" Garth asked.

"Sorry," Jo muttered between bites of her 'breakfast'. "Why didn't you come up to wake me?"

"Well, we thought about it," Charlie admitted.

"But your mom scares us," Garth added.

"Nonsense, Ellen is awesome," Ash said, as he passed a semaphore that had just changed to yellow at top speed. "Remember that time she got really mad at me because I gave you a smoke?"

He chuckled, completely oblivious to his bandmates glances of confusion.

Jo considered it a small miracle they hadn't been stopped by any cops on the way there, because she was absolutely sure not all the maneuvers and shortcuts Ash took were entirely legal. They left the van in the venue's parking lot and sent Jo inside to look for instructions while they unloaded all their equipment. Dean was already inside while the staff set the tables and the centerpieces.

"Sorry, sorry, I'm sorry!" Jo said, as she ran up to him. "I'm sorry we're late..."

"You're not late," Dean clarified, frowning. Jo stopped in her tracks to blink at him. "It's ten past eight. You're just a little bit late."

His calming smile was the last thing Jo needed to actually settle down for a bit. He was wearing a shirt with suspenders – again – and black slacks that were obviously the half bottom of his best man suit. He looked incredibly handsome as always and the fact he was so calm and collected when he was usually so uptight about things was actually very soothing on Jo's nerves.

"Oh... well..."

"Jo!" a soft voice called her from the side. A young woman with black hair and a lavender dress was holding onto Emma, who struggled in her arms trying to get away. "Jo!"

"Hello, Emma!" Jo greeted her, with a smile. "How are you?"

Emma was obviously uncomfortable in her tiny white dress and the little flower crown Dean had put in her hair. Or perhaps it was the fact that this strange woman wasn’t letting her go.

"Jo!" she said a little louder, wriggling and trashing in the woman's arms.

"Oh... she's a little..." the woman tried to say.

"Put her down," Dean instructed. "I told you she wasn't that friendly."

The woman obeyed, pursing her lips in a miffed expression for a moment. Emma ran up to Jo with her arms extended and she picked her up while shouting "Whoosh!" Emma laughed happily and threw her arms around Jo's neck.

"Okay, don't get too cozy," Dean told her. "Jo's not here in official nanny capacity."

"I don't mind," Jo said while the woman walked up to them. Dean introduced her as Carmen, Jess' best friend and maid of honor. When Jo shook her hand she had the impression Carmen was a little stiff.

"So you're with the... band?" she asked, her eyes travelling up and down as if she really thought Jo was going to perform in her worn out jeans and the first T-shirt she fished out of the closet.

"Yeah, that's what I came here to ask," Jo said, turning her attention back to Dean. "Where do you want everything?"

Dean showed her to the stage by the door (that could actually rotate to face the garden where the ceremony would take place or the inside of the ballroom as it was needed, which was pretty cool) and went over the details with her: the ceremony would be taking place at eleven, then the guests would come in for lunch and then they would dance until the late afternoon. There had to be time for all the ceremonies, like the speeches, the food, the throwing of the bouquet...

The more he spoke, the more he turned into the version of himself that Jo was used to: organized, pernickety, keeping every single thing that could go wrong in mind and formulating plans of actions in that case.

"It's going to be alright, Dean," Jo said, after Dean described in detail which ones of Jess' relatives could get obnoxiously drunk and try to jump on stage to give impromptu speeches and what she should do about it. "We'll discreetly fight off Uncle Gerald. You don't have to worry about anything."

"Okay, but he's like a very large guy," he said, eyeing Ash and Garth, who were both rather skinny, and Charlie, who was so tiny he could have probably picked her up and carry her off the venue without breaking a sweat. "So if he tries..."

"We know self-defense," Jo said, passing Emma back on to him. "Really, it's going to be fine."

And in reassuring him of that, she realized she had shaken off her own nervousness. It was almost funny how he had been calm when she arrived and now he was the one stressing out. It was like when he was in control of things everything was fine, but when he had to trust someone else to do the job...

Jo almost laughed at herself. She had known Dean for over a year and now she was realizing he had trouble delegating on people?

"What's so funny?" Charlie asked, while they hauled Garth's drumming set onto the stage.

"Nothing, doesn't matter."

They did some soundproofs and played "Words of Love" to warm up:

_Hold me close and_

_Tell me how you feel_

_Tell me love is real..._

Out of the corner of her eye, Jo saw Carmen pulling from Dean's arm, trying to get him to put Emma down and dance with her. Dean was politely refusing, shaking his head and holding his daughter closer to him still, almost like she was a shield against that woman's advances.

"Great acoustics," Ash commented when they finished the song, looking around and probably imagining it full of adoring fans screaming his name.

"Good job, guys," Dean congratulated them, walking fast past the stage. "I'm going to check everything's fine with the gazebo."

He disappeared into the garden, with Carmen tailing him not far behind.

"Woah, I haven't seen so much thirst in a chick since we took Charlie to the Renaissance fair," Garth commented.

"The dresses make the girls look adorable, okay?" Charlie said in her own defense.

Between one thing and the other, eleven o'clock practically sneaked up on them. Charlie and Jo ran into the backroom to change and get make up on just two seconds before Jess and the rest of her bridesmaids barged in with a twirl of dresses and clacking of high heels.

"Make way, make way!" Carmen said, as if she was the owner of the room. Jess walked in almost at the edge of tears.

"Oh, honey, no, no, don't cry," another girl was saying as Jess sat down in front of the mirror and tried to contain the tears. "It's going to be okay."

"What happened?" Jo asked confused and more than a little bit scared at the fact the freaking bride was about to break down into tears twenty minutes before the ceremony.

"Don't worry about this, band girl," Carmen replied with a sideways glance. "It's none of your business."

Jo really didn't like that woman.

"It's the dress," Jess said, breathing in deeply. "It's... my mom was supposed to bring it with the hairdresser and the make-up artist and... they're stuck in traffic and the hairdresser's dog died so she had to cancel and they don't know..."

"They'll make it!" Charlie assured her. She was actually pretty great in crisis when they didn't concern her directly. "I'm sure your mom will make it."

That was probably what her friends had been repeating to her all along and not what she needed to hear right now. They had to offer her concrete solutions. Jo wished she was more like Dean and have a plan B for every single thing.

"We can do your hair and make-up," she offered, even though her experiences in those areas were nowhere near as great as that of an actual hairdresser. Charlie gave her a look of wide eyes and fear, but Jo kept talking as if it was the most logical solution to everything. "Yes, of course we can. We can all help, it'll be easy."

The three bridesmaid exchanged looks between each other, and although Carmen looked skeptical, they all started parroting as if they didn't have a care in the world.

"Yeah, girl, it's going to be alright."

"Here, come on, wipe the tears. We can't work on wet ground."

"What about the dress?" Jess asked. "Mom won't make it on time..."

"Oh, don't worry about it," Jo said. "I've been to like, lots of wedding and they always start late."

She elbowed Charlie, who nodded in agreement a little slower than it was necessary.

Jess blinked her last tears away and slowly, like she was still not allowing herself to believe the crisis was over, she smiled.

"Okay," she said and chuckled a little to let go of the tension. "Okay, yes. Let's... do this."

Her friends cheered and started moving around, the three of them talking at the same time about how they needed hair spray and brushes and lipstick and...

"I'll go tell Dean to hold everything off," Carmen offered.

"Charlie's on it," Jo said.

She absolutely did it because Charlie could move faster than Carmen in stilettos and because Carmen needed to be there for her friend until they were certain this was going to work. Not because she didn't want Carmen hanging around Dean and Emma some more. That would have been stupid and selfish.

It was easy to convince herself of it when there were so many things that needed her attention.

"Pass me the eyeliner."

"You're going to look great."

"Okay, pucker your lips a little bit..."

Between the four of them they had Jess ready for the ceremony in twenty minutes. It would have been a lot shorter if Charlie hadn't been coming back to the dressing room with progressive news about what was going on out there.

"The guests are arriving. I think I spotted the Uncle Gerald Dean warned us about."

"That's great, Charles."

"The waiters are asking if they should start serving appetizers and drinks."

"Soft ones only," Jess approved. "I don't want anyone drunk until after the ceremony."

"Ash said maybe he should start playing some functional music to cheer the crowd..."

"Wrestle the guitar out of his hands if you have to," Jo ordered her.

A second later, while they were curling Jess' hair, they heard some rock music coming from the ballroom. Jo opened her arms and shoot an interrogatory look at Charlie when she came back.

"Dean said it was okay!" Charlie said. "Anyway, doesn't matter. She's here."

A second later, an older version of Jess strode into the room with a hanger and a plastic wrap.

"Honey, I am so, so sorry..."

"It’s okay," Jess said. She finally looked like the entire weight of what was going started to hit her. "I'm... I'm getting married!"

"You're getting married!" the bridesmaids repeated, with cheers and applause.

Jo grabbed Charlie by the arm and dragged her out of there. The ballroom was much more crowded, with people dressed up in suits and dresses and strange hats with little veils. Jo felt a little out of place in her cocktail dress and that considering she wasn't the tiny lesbian wearing a blue suit and a bow tie. Several heads turned in their direction as they ran for the stage.

Dean (with Emma firmly holding onto his hand and casting suspicious glances onto all those people around) and Sam and were standing nearby, looking slightly panicked until they spotted her. Jo gave them a little nod and then took Garth's hand to climb up on the stage.

"Okay," Dean said. "Tell everyone to go to their seats."

The easiest way to do that was to low-key start playing the wedding march. It was almost funny to see all those people flee towards the chairs installed outside. Jo could see Charlie's little smirk of satisfaction as the notes exited her keyboard before stopping once all the guests were outside.

"She's ready?" Sam asked, his eyes growing wide as if he too was just now realizing what was going on. "Okay... oh, dammit, I'm getting married," he muttered, paling.

"Yes. Yes, you are," Dean said, putting his free arm on Sam's shoulder. "You're getting married. It’s happening."

"How did I think this was a good idea?" Sam asked. "There's all these people... we should have done something smaller... we should have eloped..."

"You'll be glad when it's all over, little brother," Dean promised him. "Okay, go now."

Sam bolted towards his spot in front of the judge right on time to avoid seeing his bride coming out of the dressing room. Jess looked very beautiful in her puffy white dress and let out a deep sigh of relief when she came closer. It almost seemed like she wanted to thank everybody, but she was afraid to start tearing up again. Almost at the same time, Castiel, Benny and a friend of Sam’s Jo didn’t know stumbled forwards with a white-haired man.

"Mr. Moore," Dean greeted him, flashing a charming smile. Mr. Moore’s nostrils flared, but Dean didn’t see it or just pretended not to. "And Mrs. Moore, charming as always."

“You’re such a flatterer, Dean,” Mrs. Moore laughed.

She lassoed her arm around Dean’s, obviously intending to walk with him to the end of the aisle while Dean picked Emma with his free arm, therefore protecting both his flanks from any surprise attack. Jo tried to bite back her satisfactory smile at how disappointed Carmen seemed at that development. She had to settle for Sam’s friend while Castiel and Benny offered their arms to the other bridesmaids.

When everybody was paired up, Dean gave Jo a thumbs up and Charlie started playing the march again, in an even slower tempo if that was possible. The bridal party moved towards the minister and Sam standing at the gazebo. For all his apparent nervousness, he was now smiling and his face became even happier when he saw Jess.

“Okay,” Jo muttered when Charlie stopped playing so the minister could start his speech. “I think the worse is over.”

“Oh,” Ash said, raising his guitar with a manic grin in his face. “But that only means the fun is about to start!”


	10. Chapter 10

Dean was happy for his baby brother. He was. Sam was a hardworking, smart and kind guy who definitely deserved to be happy with a sunny, positive, nice girl like Jessica. Sam had always wanted a home and a family, a “normal life” that their dad, with his temporary jobs that had them moving from state to state, his mourning of their late mother and his drinking; couldn’t provide for them. Dean knew he had been a little envious when he’d got that with Lydia, but now Sam had a shot at the apple pie life too and it couldn’t have happened to a better guy. He was genuinely proud of him for having come so far and earned the life he wanted.

But he was also so elated and relieved that all his closest friends were now officially married and he could count on no one ever asking him to be their best man again. Two nights before (because Sam didn’t want to be hungover for his wedding and that was a sensible request they could respect) the four of them had toasted with shots of tequila (Benny had refused to let anyone go home until they reached the worm) and tried to determine who’d had the worst wedding of all.

“It has to be Cas’,” Dean had insisted, ignoring Castiel’s offended expression.

“It’s true, Meg looked like she wanted to rip her own dress and kick all the guests out,” Sam had remembered.

“Well, that’s because she did,” Castiel had confessed. “She abhorred the idea of marriage and said it was an antiquated institution invented to keep women from reaching their full potential.”

“Why’d she go with it then?”

“My mother said she’d die if I ever married Meg. Meg thought the expression on her face would be a hilarious sight.”

Dean had to give it to Meg: despite their differences (and they were many), she had a very sophisticated sense of humor. And she loved Cas, in her own way.

“No news from the clinic?”

“I thought tonight was about having fun,” Castiel had groaned, and Dean took that as a signal he shouldn’t ask again.

“I hear you, brother,” Benny had said, pouring another drink for everybody. “I’m gonna have fun while I can, because the minute I set a foot back home, Andrea’s sending me to the dog house. Again.”

He had laughed as if was the most hilarious thing and stopped short of adding something along the lines of “women are crazy, am I right?”. Sam, always the bleeding heart, had tried to get him talking.

“Hey, Benny, is everything okay with Andrea?”

“Man, she doesn’t like it when I have a little fun,” Benny had complained, shaking his head. “I swear, she sees me taking one sip of one beer and she freaks.”

Suddenly, that topic wasn’t all that fun either.

“Whatever, this night isn’t about us,” Dean had said. “It’s about me baby brother and the last one to tie the knot. To Sam!”

“To Sam!” Benny and Castiel had repeated, raising their glasses.

“The last one to tie the knot!” Benny had repeated. “May your ball and chain be light and may she not nag you too much.”

Nobody had laughed along. It was kind of hard to do when one of them was desperately trying to knock his wife up, the other was getting his in two days and the third one was just having serious flashbacks of the night his had passed away. Benny had been either too drunk to notice his friends’ lackluster response or he’d decided to ignore it. Whatever the case, he’d complained when they’d called off the night early.

“We haven’t even taken the kid to a stripper’s bar!” he’d pointed out. “You guys are growing old and boring.”

“Super old,” Dean had agreed while they dragged him out of the bar.

“Old as fuck,” Sam had said while he stopped a cab.

“We’re entitled to be boring,” Castiel had said before giving the driver Benny’s direction and paying in advance. “We’ll see you at the ceremony, Benny.”

Afterwards, the three of them had stood around awkwardly, wondering for a bit if they should have done or say something else.

“You know what? Let’s not even worry about this,” Dean had decided in the end. “Sam’s big day is coming up and we need to focus on that. Afterwards, I’ll call Andrea and ask if there’s anything we can do for her.”

Everybody had agreed on it.

And on the actual day of the wedding, it had been even easier to ignore: Benny had actually been a good sport and kept Mr. Moore busy along with Castiel and Sam’s douchy college friend Brady when there were delays. Delays that were no one’s fault, honestly, but Mr. Moore was such a stick in the mud Dean could feel his glances full of judgment following him around the room. He and Mrs. Moore had been divorced for years, in not very friendly terms, but they had agreed to bury the hatchet long enough for the wedding to come and pass. And Dean just knew there was going to make a scene because his ex-wife hadn’t showed up in time with the stupid dress.

“That is just like Eleanor,” he commented, his jaw clenched very tight and a frown appearing in between his eyebrows. “She never could take anything seriously, no matter what it was. I wish Jess has chosen wisely on this respect. She needs someone who takes a relationship with utmost respect.”

Dean immediately entered in damage control mode. Sam was green in the face, obviously understanding that the jab was directed at him, but lacking the words to explain that he wasn’t nervous because he was getting cold feet or anything like that. This was just utterly important for Jess and he wanted it to be perfect. Dean didn’t think Mr. Moore would believe it if he explained it to him (for some reason, the old man didn’t seem to like him too much), so he needed a quick distraction. Castiel and Benny understood what he wanted them to do just by throwing a glance at them.

“Mr. Moore, come with us, please,” Castiel said, discreetly dragging him away. “Sam tells me you’re an art aficionado and there are some paintings on the other side of the ballroom you might be interested in.”

“Yeah, mister, let’s go see them,” Benny added, flanking the other side. “I’m sure you can tell us all sort of artsy things we don’t know.”

“Woah, if he had the stick a little further up his ass it would be showing up in his throat every time he spoke, huh?” Brady joked.

Neither Winchester laughed at his joke.

“Brady, go help the guys with Mr. Moore,” Dean suggested.

“But…”

“Go, Brady,” Sam insisted.

Brady huffed but finally left them alone by the stage where two of Jos band mates were lazying around, playing with their drumsticks and the guitar picks like they hadn’t got a care in the world. Dean eyed them with suspicion. He wasn’t too keen of the mullet one of them had, but at least the both of them were sporting suits. Emma was standing nearby, looking at them with attentive curiosity.

“How are you feeling?” Dean asked, turning his attention back to his brother.

“It’s the happiest day of my life,” Sam said, automatically, almost like he was trying to convince himself.

“You’re going to vomit, aren’t you?”

Sam looked at him like he was about to cry. If Jess’ mom and dad started fighting right then, it would make Jess upset, which would make him upset, which would make Dean’s life all the more difficult since he’d be the one in charge of averting the disaster. Amazingly, Dean wasn’t feeling the pressure. He’d dealt with board meetings that were a lot more action-packed than this. Yeah, the guests were looking at their watches and cellphones like they had somewhere else to be, but they had appetizers to entertain themselves with and Mr. Moore still hadn’t exploded and sent the groom’s party packing. And apparently, Carmen was too busy with the crisis in the dressing room to come harass him some more.

So, if only Mrs. Moore would do everybody the favor of showing up with the dress, everything would be just…

“Wait, Emma, don’t do that!”

It was too late: Emma was already trying to climb onto the stage pushing up with her little arms but not quite reaching the place. Dean moved to catch her, but the guitarist with the mullet caught her by the back of the dress and gently sat her by his side. Her little feet hang several inches above the floor.

“You need to be careful, little one,” he told her. “Hey, Jo says you like music, right?”

He placed his guitar up on his knees and started playing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”. Emma stared up at him and a slow smirk appeared on her face.

“Uh,” Dean said, a little surprised. “She… she likes you.”

That was a little understatement. Emma was looking at the guy with such attention it was safe to say she approve of him wholeheartedly.

“Kids are chill, man,” the guitarist replied, still playing. “They’re like… little humans who still think everything is possible. They’re nice.”

Emma pointed at something in the guy’s hand.

“Yeah, sure, you can have it, Emma,” he said, giving her his guitar pick. “I’ve got more.”

“How’d you know her name?” Dean asked.

“Dude, how we don’t know her name,” the drummer laughed, toying with his sticks. “She’s all Jo talks about. Emma did this, Emma did that…”

“Yeah, she talks about you, too,” the guitarist added. “The way she puts it, you’re a pretty decent cat.”

Dean didn’t know why that gave him a warm feeling in his chest. Of course he knew Jo cared deeply about the both of them, but the fact she talked so highly about it to her friends, that was just… he didn’t know what to say. So instead, he extended his hand to them.

“Don’t think I’ve caught your names.”

They were Ash and Garth, and the redheaded girl who kept going to and from the dressing room to report on progress was called Charlie. And Dean was ever so glad that she was doing that job, because Sam seemed at the edge of a complete meltdown when she finally arrived with pure relief in her face.

“She’s here,” she said.

Obviously, she meant Mrs. Moore with the dress or the bride herself. Dean wasn’t prepared to turn around and see Jo strutting in stilettos towards the stage with a purple dress that ended right above her knee and hugged her figure lovingly. She had let her blonde hair flow free over her shoulders and done something to her lips, because they looked more voluminous and glossier than before. When she smiled at him and gave him a little acknowledging nod, Dean felt a shiver go down his spine.

Goddammit, she was nine years younger than him. And his nanny. That took care of his daughter. Who he’d had with his wife. His wife that had only been dead for a little over a year.

What was wrong with him?

Luckily, the crisis in his hands distracted him from dwelling too much on it.

“Get everybody to their seats,” he ordered Charlie, as he picked Emma up knowing exactly what was going to happen once Carmen returned. Not that the fact he was shoving in her face that he was a single father stopped her before, but he had other ways of fending her off.

Jess showed up in her dress right after Sam had bolted to take his place at the end of the aisle. She looked beautiful surrounded by white and with the veil falling on her face. (See? He was allowed to think other women were beautiful without it meaning anything at all). She was also clearly nervous by the way she clutched onto the bouquet, but at least she was nervous as in “ _I’m going to ride a big rollercoaster!_ ” and not as in “ _If this doesn’t turn out how I planned it my entire life is ruined_ ” like Sam was.

Dean gave her an encouraging smile before turning all his attention right to Mrs. Moore. He caught a glimpse of Carmen's disappointed face, but couldn't bring himself to care. She was very pretty and he was absolutely certain she had a personality to match (unless she was Jess' Brady), but she simply was too...

Jo's band started playing the bridal march, so he shook his head and focused on getting to the end of that aisle. Sam looked a lot better now that the ceremony was actually underway. Dean winked at him and Sam took a deep breath before turning his attention to Jess.

Mr. Moore at least had the decency to force a smile while he kissed Jess' cheek and shook Sam's hand before taking his seat. Sam didn't seem to mind: he was too mesmerized looking at Jess, who smiled wide at him. And just like that, the previous months of nonstop bickering vanished in thin air. Everyone in that garden could tell how in love they were, but Dean, who had seen up close just how much tension and strain the wedding had put on their relationship, couldn't help but to be a little bit relieved.

They were going to be okay. They were going to be happy and they were going to have a wonderful life and Dean couldn't be prouder of his little brother.

And he really needed to stop that, because Jess' mom and cousins were already tearing up and if he started too, it'd just be too much. He distracted himself by getting Emma to play with the flower in his pocket, and miraculously, she was quiet until the end.

"By the power invested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife," the minister told them, after what felt like hours. "You may kiss the bride."

The clapping and cheering was thunderous. Emma looked at Dean like she was scared, but he smiled at her to reassure her everything was fine.

"Yay, Emma, yay!" he told her, pointing at the people around. "Clap for your Uncle Sammy, come on!"

Emma hit her hands together with very little coordination, but a little grin appeared on her lips. She seemed to understand this was motive for celebration, because she started babbling excitedly and pointing at all the flowers around. Dean got her a handful of rose petals for her to throw at Jess and Sam and Emma spent several minutes fascinated at how they flew and fell to the floor while they waited for the queue in front of the bride and the groom to clear a little.

She couldn't get any cuter. It was a mystery to him how there was people in the world who didn't want to have one of those, because his heart thumped in his chest and a lump formed on his throat every time he looked at his daughter.

"Hey, congratulations."

"Are you... are you crying?" Sam asked, almost like he couldn't contain his laughter.

"No, I'm allergic to stupid questions," Dean replied. He still pulled his little brother in for a tight hug. Because of course he was, but he wasn't going to let Sam get all touchy feely with him when there was a party to attend.

He gave Jo a thumb up when he passed the stage and she nodded. A second later, they were playing a very animated song he didn't know (some sort of pop music crap that people could dance to) while the waiters and waitresses hurry to guide everybody to their chairs. Dean made sure to sit between Benny to control his drinking and Jess' married cousin to avoid any more unwanted flirting. Emma destroyed the centerpiece, because it seemed like her obsession with petals wasn't going to go away any time soon.

"She's grown so big!" Andrea, Benny's wife, said. Dean didn't think he had seen her in months, and she looked splendid (see? He could absolutely think women looked nice without it being a betrayal to Lydia's memory). She was wearing a blue dress that marked her figure beautifully and had round pearl earrings in her ears. She made a funny grimace at Emma, who giggled and cover her face with her little hands.

"Well, you haven't come to see her in ages," Dean pointed out. "So maybe that's why she looks big to you."

Andrea's smiled turned sour and Dean realized too late he had brought up a delicate subject.

"Yes, well, I would spend more time with all of you. I'd love to," she said, her Greek accent becoming more noticeable the more she spoke. "But things are always busy at the restaurant and someone has to be around."

"You know I'm always happy to help," Benny said, with a little grumble of irritation.

"If by help, you mean drinking all the wine that's meant to be for the patrons, then yes, you're always very happy to do that," Andrea replied, sharply. "Oh, but it's fine. We hit a bit of a rough patch – I'm sure Benny told you about it – but we have a new business partner now and he is great..."

"Yeah, so great," Benny muttered, looking at the ceiling like he had heard those praises far too many times and he was tired of them.

"He's very attentive. He actually bought these earrings for my birthday," Andrea continued, flat out ignoring Benny's discomfort. "Aren't they beautiful?"

"Do you have something a little stronger than wine?"  Benny asked the waiter.

Dean wished Carmen was flirting with him right then instead.

He didn't have to keep looking at Benny and Andrea's problems for long, though. He had the excuse of getting up and giving his best man speech around the time they served desserts. He clambered up on the stage with Ash and Charlie's help and somehow, he ended up standing right in front of Jo. He opened his mouth, but he didn’t know what to say.

(Had her eyes always been that shiny? Had her smile always been that radiant?)

Jo winked at him and let him have the microphone. Dean fumbled with the pages he had hastily stuffed inside his pocket that morning and cleared his throat.

“Excuse me, hi, hello,” he muttered.

Not many people turned their attention to him. And he didn’t know where to go from there: he didn’t want to be that annoying guy who spoke while no one listened and interrupted everyone’s good time. Luckily, Jo had him covered: she nodded at Ash, who picked up his guitar and strung a single high note on it. The guests groaned in unison and finally turned their attention towards the stage.

"Hello, everyone. I'm Dean Winchester. Otherwise known as the good looking one," he joked, and to his immense relief, he was rewarded with a chorus of laughter. "I want to thank you all for coming to my little brother's wedding. You're probably wondering how he managed to snatch a girl like Jess. Believe me... so am I. You don't deserve her, Sammy, I'm sorry." He shrugged as the guests laughed even louder this time. "I kid, I kid. Let me tell you a couple of things about Sam and Jess."

He talked about how Sam had met Jess when he walked into a pre-Med class instead of a pre-Law one and somehow managed to walk out with her number. He also spoke of the night he and Sam had got drunk over Emma's birth and how excited Sam had been that he was proposing to Jess. He omitted the part where he woke up with a hangover to the news of Lydia's death, because that would have been a bit of a bummer to bring up at the wedding. But by the look Sam threw at him, he knew his brother was thinking it, so he rushed to the part where they were both awesome and he loved them and hoped they were happy and all those things best men were supposed to say.

"... Sam always wanted a home," he said. "Our dad travelled a lot with us in tow and we never really settled down. But we always had each other. And now he has Jess and he's getting exactly what he wanted, because, as we learned very early on in our lives, home isn't place. Home is with the people you love and sometimes they are where you least expect them to be. So... uh..."

Jo hurriedly grabbed a glass of champagne from a passing waiter and put it in his hand. Dean smile at her in thanks and raised it over his head.

"To Sam and Jess!"

"To Sam and Jess!" the guests repeated and soon the ballroom was flooded with cheering and clapping. Dean was proud to see some were even wiping their eyes with the napkins. He was good. He was really good.

"That was beautiful," Jo whispered at him.

Dean scratched the back of his neck and leaned over the microphone one more time: "Ladies and gentlemen... the band!"

He jumped off the stage as they started playing the first notes of "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" and watched as Sam guided Jess to the center of the dance floor. They swayed in unison, surrounded by sighs and more clapping. He made his way back to the table and Emma threw her arms in his direction the minute he came into her field of vision.

"Where's Benny?" Dean asked Andrea as he picked up his daughter from her lap.

"I don't know," Andrea replied, bitterly.

She didn't seem like she wanted to elaborate. Dean left his glass by her side and waited until Jess' mom and dad finished their turn. People awed and cooed when he passed Emma onto Sam's arms and took Jess' hand.

"Thank you for that speech," Jess whispered at him. Her voice sounded rough, like she was holding back tears.

"Hey, no, you're not allowed to cry. You're going to ruin your not professionally done make-up," Dean reminded her and Jess chuckled. "That's better, Auntie Jess. Yep, that's definitely better."

Emma laughed when Sam lifted her up and tried to steal the flower from his lapel. Dean left Jess with Brady and caught Emma back before she ended up barfing all over Sam again. The table was empty this time and he signaled a waiter to bring him a glass of water.

"Jo!" Emma said, pointing at the stage.

"Yeah, that's Jo, but she's working," Dean explained to her. Then he corrected himself: "Well, I guess she's also working when she's home with us, but... you know what I mean."

Emma tilted her head at him. Probably because she literally had no idea what he meant.

"She's good, huh?" he told Emma. "I mean, we knew she was a good singer, but she's really, really good."

"Jo!" Emma insisted, waving a finger as if she was convinced Dean wasn't getting the message and she needed to be a lot clearer. "Wanna go Jo!"

"Maybe later. Look, Emma, a flower."

Emma's attention would not be swayed. She puckered her lips, annoyed and tried to wiggle out of Dean's arm, so he put her down and made her dance on her spot. That kept her distracted for exactly five minutes, enough time for Carmen to spot them and made her way to them.

"You owe me a dance," she said with a grin, even though Dean was completely sure he had promised no such thing.

"I can't, I'm sorry..."

"Everybody's dancing!"

"Exactly. Who am I going to leave Emma with? She's... come back here, you little devil!"

When Dean recanted the events later, he would say Emma managed to slip from his grip. That was his story and he was never going to admit that he let her go to cause a distraction and have an excuse to run away from Carmen.

But whichever the case, Emma was headed straight to the stage, sorting through dancers and waiters with impressive dexterity until she finally reached her goal. Dean worried that being so close to the speakers would damage her ears, but Jo finished the song and leaned over to pull her up with her as the other stopped playing as well.

"Ladies and gentleman, please put your hands together for the maid of honor!" Jo announced and Jess' cousin climbed up on the stage.

"Well, your speech's going to be a tough act to follow, Dean, but I'll give it a shot," she said, while people returned to their seats. "Hello, everybody..."

Jo stealthily took the chance to move to the side of the stage and returned Emma to him.

"She's a bit restless, huh?"

"I think she's overwhelmed by all these people," Dean confirmed. "She wants to be with familiar faces."

"Take her to the garden," she suggested. "There's plenty of room for her to run. And plenty of room for you to hide."

Dean didn't know if she had really seen his pathetic attempts at fending of Carmen's attention or if she'd just made a lucky guess, but either way, he was thankful.

He escaped with Emma and sat on the now abandoned front row in front of the gazebo. The day was still warm for April and the rose petals filled the air with a sweet fragrance. Emma picked them up carefully in her hands and then threw them over her head, laughing with joy as they floated down.

"Hope that when you get married you're not so decided to run away," he told her. Emma didn't pay attention to him, too busy with her game. "Or that you don't have bridesmaids like that. Damn, it's not that she seems like a bad person," Dean continued, more to himself than to his daughter. "It just... it feels like yesterday that I was marrying your mom, and then we were having you... and then she was gone. It's... it's too soon," he concluded. "You're still too little. I want to focus on you. Even if a person I wasn't expecting comes into our lives, you are the most important thing."

Obviously, Emma didn't understand or didn't care about his dilemma, but she must have sensed the hurt in his voice, because she turned around and threw a handful of petals at him. Dean grinned and grabbed her by the arms to make her spin in the air (just a little bit, not too much that she would get too dizzy), and he wished she could stay little forever. He guessed that was something all parents wished for entirely selfish reasons, but he told himself it was because he just didn't want her to know. He didn't want her to know about his mother's absence and his father's sorrow. Well, he was turning into a goddamn poet that night.

"I love you, baby girl," he muttered, pressing his lips against the top of her head.

"Love ya,” she repeated back at him.

And what the ceremony and the speech and all the speeches that followed his couldn't do, his daughter managed with two little words. He let her run around the gazebo while he tried with all his might to wipe his tears.

 

* * *

 

The rest of the wedding passed in a blissful blur. Carmen found another person to accost (Brady, who didn't seem to mind at all) and Emma resisted the slumber long enough to get a spoonful or two of wedding pie. Afterwards, she was puffing and rubbing her eyes, so Dean found a couch in the ballroom's lobby and laid her down with his jacket as an improvised pillow. He didn't see Benny or Andrea again, but Meg and Castiel were kind enough to bring him more pie and sit with him for a while.

"Jess' uncle is trying to dance the Macarena," Meg informed him. "We bolted before we died of second hand embarrassment."

"She looks very peaceful," Castiel commented with his glance fixed on Emma's sleeping face. "I wonder what she's dreaming about."

There was a sad glimmer on his eyes, but before Dean could ask him if he was okay, Meg spoke:

"Cas, bring me another glass of champagne, will you?"

"Yes, of course, dear." Castiel stood up and wandered away, a little absent-mindedly. Well, Castiel was an absent-minded dude, but Dean could have sworn he had never seen him so downcast before.

The reason became evident when Meg stood right in front of him, forcing him to look at her in the eye.

"Don't ask him," she ordered.

"Ask what?"

"Oh, come on, you're his best friend. I know he told you about the clinic," Meg replied. "Don't ask him how it went, because he's already too sad as it is without us having to inform every single person about the results."

Slowly, Dean remembered the scene with the two at Emma's birthday.

"Oh... you mean you can't..." he started, but the death glare Meg threw at him was enough to shut him up.

"Like I said, don't mention it too him," she repeated. "He took it hard."

Dean had no idea what to say, so he said nothing. When Lydia had found she was pregnant, he had been over the moon. He didn't know he wanted children until that moment, but when it happened, he had just accepted it. He had no idea how he would have felt if he or Lydia had wanted to have some and just... couldn't. He couldn't imagine his life without Emma either.

"And how are you taking it?" he asked.

"Since when do you care how I take things?" Meg asked, sharply.

She had a point, but Dean noticed she was avoiding his eye. Castiel had told her once that Meg was like a porcupine: when she was hurting or angry, out came the thorns. So he treaded carefully.

"Look, I know we've never been best of friends," he told her. "But I just want you to know that I'm sorry, and if there's anything I can do to help..."

"There isn't," she snapped.

Dean raised his hands and dropped the topic. After a few seconds, Meg sighed and unfolded her arms.

"Just be there for Cas," she instructed him. "He's still processing it. When he feels better, we'll look into our options, but right now, it's too soon to bring it up again."

"Gotcha."

They ended the conversation right on time for a slightly disheveled Castiel to show up with two more glasses, even though Dean hadn't asked for anything to drink.

"Sorry I took so long. I had to avoid the Conga line."

Dean glanced inside the ballroom and cringed. Everybody seemed to be tipsy or outright drunk by that point, allowing them to shake off their inhibitions and dance like nobody was looking, even though there would probably be photographic evidence of the entire thing later. Emma had simply chosen the best of times to take her nap.

Meg seemed to be thinking the same thing, because she emptied her glass and grabbed Castiel by the tie.

"What do you say we go to that outrageously expensive suite we paid for and we avoid watching more people try to do the Macarena?"

"I am all for that," Castiel nodded. He gave her a quick kiss on the lips and handed Dean her glass. "Goodbye, Dean."

"Have fun," Dean replied with a little smirk.

At least it was great to know that Castiel and Meg's relationship was strong enough to survive that adversity. It gave him hope for humanity.

One by one the guests either fell underneath their own drunkenness or they realized it was getting dark outside. Several walked past Dean, congratulated him on his speech or simply waved at him. Carmen and Brady left together. He had an arm around her waist and she was caressing the lapels of his jacket. None of them even glanced in his direction and Dean thanked the universe for small miracles like that.

He peered inside to see that Jo and her band were still playing, even though the ballroom wasn't even half full by that point. In twenty minutes more, right about the time Emma started to wake up, the entire place was empty to the point where the only people left were Sam, Jess and the other two bridesmaids and their partners. Jo and her band had left their instruments on the stage and they were sitting on the same table as them, laughing and chatting happily. Dean deduced it was safe to go back inside.

"Dean!" Sam called him. His bow tie was undone and his cheeks were red, indicating he had gone a bit overboard with the champagne, but still was nowhere near as drunk as he could have been. "Where have you been? You missed the... you missed the bouquet throwing!"

"Right, because I'm an old unmarried maiden that needs all the luck she can get to snatch a husband, am I right?" Dean replied, rolling his eyes.

As if he needed more evidence that his brother wasn't entirely sober, he actually laughed at his terrible joke. In any other occasion, he would have rolled his eyes or made that bitch face he did when he didn't think Dean was being funny, even though he always was.

"Jo!" Emma exclaimed as soon as she saw her.

Jo immediately left the fork for the piece of pie she was eating and caught Emma when she practically jumped from Dean's arms onto her.

"Hello, there," she greeted her with a smile. "Did you enjoy the party?"

"Oh, yeah, she's all partied out," Dean said, moving a chair to sit by Jo's side. "You did a great job, by the way."

"Did I?" Jo scrunched up her face, as if she was thinking long and hard about the entire afternoon. "I don't know. I think I saw one particular guest not dancing to any of the songs."

"I danced with Jess," Dean protested.

"You had to," Jess reminded him. She also had bright eyes and was slurring a little bit, but if he had to guess, Dean would have said Sam was the worst of the two. "You didn't dance with anyone else."

"What can I say? The prettiest girl at the party was more interested in jumping on the singer." He shrugged and pointed at Emma, who was now grabbing Jo's cheeks as if she was trying to figure out something.

"Well, I'll say we were an unbridled success," Ash commented. He was leaning back on the chair, legs open wide, and he had done away with his suite's jacket. Dean would have bet he would have also taken off his shirt if his band mates hadn't stopped him.

"Yes, you were great," Jess' cousin said. "Actually, I have a colleague who's getting married in a couple of months. Do you have a Facebook page or...?"

Charlie took out a smartphone and started typing out as fast as her finger allowed her to.

"We do now! Thank you for recommending us!"

So everybody had got what they wanted. Awesome. Dean helped himself to another piece of pie very slowly while the waiters started cleaning up the ballroom.

"I'll stay and make sure everything's in order," he assured Sam when they said they wanted to go to sleep. They had a plane to catch the following night, after all. "Congrats again, little bro."

"Thank you." Sam gave him a quick hug and turned around to offer Jess his arm. "Let's go, Mrs. Winchester."

"After you, Mr. Moore," Jess replied playfully.

Dean watched them go with a little smirk. He was going to ask the waiters if they needed anything when someone put a hand on his shoulder and made him turn around.

Jo looked positively tiny without her heels. Her make-up was gone, so she looked a little bit more like the girl Dean was used to see, but the effect in his stomach wasn't gone. Especially when she smirked up at him.

"Come on, dance with me," she said, intertwining her fingers with his. "Just one song."

"There's no music..." Dean started to protest when he realized that Charlie, Ash and Garth had retaken their positions on the stage. He looked around for Emma, but he realized he didn't have the excuse that he might lose her in the crowd anymore: she was standing in front of the stage, following every one of the band's movements with expectancy. He turned his attention back at Jo. "Okay, I guess it'd be rude to say no."

"Yes, it would."

It was different than when Carmen had asked him. It was different because it was Jo. She worked for him, it was true, but she was also his friend. She took care of his daughter, she endured every single one of his neurotic request with grace and patience. She didn't expect to get anything from that dance except for just that, a dance.

It was just different and he needed to stop overthinking everything.

The band played "Hey, Jude" for them.

"Nice," he chuckled.

They stepped away from the tables and avoided the waiters trying to mop the floor. Jo put her arms around his neck and swayed her hips very slowly under his touch.

"Thank you," she said. "If you hadn't vouched for us with your brother, we wouldn't have got this gig."

"No, come on. You guys were awesome. He would have come around eventually."

Jo crooked an eyebrow with skepticism and Dean couldn't say he blamed her for it. To change the topic, he grabbed her hand and made her spin around. The skirt of her dress tangled on her legs as she laughed and her blonde hair formed a halo around her face. His heart skipped a beat…

_Lydia..._

The spin ended and Jo smiled at him, but she must have seen something in his face, because she frowned.

"You okay?"

Dean needed a second to readjust.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Just... a bit tired, that's all."

"Well, you're out of luck," Jo commented, pointing at Emma. She had her arms over her head and was swinging her little hips at the song's rhythm happily. "She's going to be up all night, now."

"Nah, the ride back home will knock her right of," Dean guaranteed her. "Hopefully."

Jo chuckled at him once more and stepped away. He didn't know why that saddened him. It had been one song and now the song was over. It hadn't meant a thing. He had no reason to feel bad that she was turning around and calling for her band.

"Alright, guys, let's go home."

It took them fifteen minutes to dismount the instruments and the speakers. Dean stuck around with Emma, watching as the last vestiges of the party disappeared in front of his eyes and then followed Jo and her friends to the parking lot. It was already dark outside, but the night was warm enough that Jo didn't need a jacket, yet not too warm, so she could walk on the asphalt barefoot, carrying her heels in her hand. They loaded everything in a van while joking and laughing, he wasn't sure about what. He was close enough that he could still see Jo's happy expression, but far enough that he couldn't make out exactly what they were saying.

He didn't know why he felt the impulse to watch them from that distance. Perhaps because every night he watched Jo get inside of her yellow Beetle and drive away and he was used to doing that now. Sometimes she looked over her shoulder and waved, sometimes she didn't even bother to do that. Dean had never before wondered why, but that night, he wished he knew.

But he didn't need to. Jo looked over at him, smirked and waved her hand. Dean's heart beat a little faster inside of his chest. He hoped it didn’t show.

"Say bye, bye, Emma," he told his daughter.

"Bah, bah!" Emma repeated.

Jo disappeared inside of the vehicle. Dean stayed rooted to his spot, holding Emma's little hand, until the van exited the parking lot and disappeared down the street.


	11. Chapter 11

That summer's temperatures reached suffocating heights. Dean spent most of the weekends either chilling underneath the air conditioner or watching Emma run in the garden, getting wet with the sprinklers. As soon as she had grown a little more, he promised himself he would buy her one of those inflatable pools so she could splash around all she wanted.

And that day would come very soon, apparently. Either Emma was growing at an alarmingly fast rate or she was going to be tall when she grew up.

"And... another half inch!" Dean said, as he drew another notch on the doorway with a black marker.

"Yay!" Jo exclaimed with a wide smile. "Congratulations, Emma!"

Emma had no idea why they were so happy, but she smiled at them anyway. There were freckles in the bridge of her nose and her green eyes looked bigger than ever, so people kept telling him she looked like him. But her dark blonde hair was looking more and more like Lydia's every day. Dean still refused to cut it, so now it was almost at her shoulder's length.

"Keep going like that and you're not going to need heels. Like, ever," Dean commented.

"Trust me, that will be a blessing for you," Jo laughed, patting Emma in the head.

Dean was reminded of that time she'd showed up limping with bandages around her sprained ankle.

"My heel broke and I fell off the stage," she'd explained.

Dean had made the shopping list disappear and told her that she didn't have to take Emma to the park that day. It was the gravest, but not the last time Jo came to work with sort of performing related malady.

After Jess' wedding and some conditioning of their Facebook page, her band had actually got several more gigs. Dean knew because Jo had begged him to share the page and the following weekend Cesar from HR walked past his office just to say that he had saved his life.

"They played at my niece's quinceañera and they were very nice, everyone was happy. Thank you for suggesting them."

"You're very welcome," Dean said, with a shrug. The credit wasn’t his after all.

It was actually impressive that their success had expanded so quickly. According to Jo, they had every other weekend booked with one party or the other and after a few months, it became practically every weekend.

"Charlie did her homework on online marketing," Jo commented. "Now we also have some bars that are asking us to play. Ash is ecstatic because he says everything is going according to his plan, which makes it sound like he wants to conquer the world. Honestly, I'm just happy to have the extra money..."

"Woah, woah, are you saying I don't pay you enough?" Dean asked, feigning offense.

Jo laughed at him and punched him in the bicep. That happened a lot those days. It wasn't that Jo hadn't smiled or joked before, but Dean had the feeling she kept her distance. Like she was forcing herself to be nice and stay positive, but now she could do it effortlessly. Her treatment of Dean had also become more informal, commenting on his wardrobe choices and reminding him that eating at his desk at lunch wasn't a healthy option because he needed to take breaks now and then.

"You're going to work yourself to death," she told him when she called him to give him the Emma’s Midday Report. "And what about your gym membership? You haven't used it even once!"

"Well, that's because if I used it, you would have to come to work an hour sooner or leave an hour later," Dean argued. "And I know your mom doesn't like me because you've told me, so I don't want to cross any more lines than I already have."

Jo didn't even try to deny it.

Something had changed in their relationship's dynamics. Dean couldn't quite put his finger on it, but if he had to state an estimated time on when it’d happened, he would have said they changed after Sam and Jess' wedding. Hell, they might have even been changing since that lunch they had around the previous year’s Thanksgiving. It was hard to describe, but it felt... it felt familiar. He had come to expect that Jo would be there every day before he left and every day when he came home the same way he expected his alarm to ring or the sun to come up. After a year and a half, she was a constant presence in his and Emma's lives.

That's why it unsettled him when he noticed a bruise in her arm one night he came home and she told him about how she and her band had almost got into a fight with a group of drunken hecklers. Dean still made her sit at the kitchen island and apply ice on it even though the bruise had probably about a day old and it was too late to stop it from forming.

“Come on, this is nothing,” she said, shaking her head. “You should have seen the other guys. Charlie’s short, but she has a mean right hook.”

“What kind of bars are you playing at?” he’d asked, half horrified.

“Whatever bar that wants us to play,” Jo said. “Just like every party that hires us. We’re in no position to say no to any gig, especially now it’s summer and Garth and Charlie don’t have to go to classes.”

“You’re pretty serious about this stuff, huh?”

Jo looked at him with an eyebrow crooked, as if she thought Dean was only stating the obvious.

“I mean, it’s great,” Dean continued, hoping he didn’t sound like he was being skeptical of her or anything like that. “I’m really glad you found something you like to do and all that.”

“You sound like my mom,” Jo commented, rolling her eyes. “She actually took it… better than I hoped, you know?”

“You didn’t expect her to take it well?”

“I expected her to tell me it was a terrible idea and I should have a more realistic focus. Maybe to get my ass back to college. Like she did when I came out of high school and told her I wanted to keep studying music,” Jo told him. “The other day I came into the kitchen with this entire speech prepared in my head about why the band was important to me and how I was going to work for it. Two sentences in, she interrupted me and she was all: ‘Well, I ain’t gonna be the one to stop you’. It was… weird.”

She looked down at the ice on her arm, almost as if she expected to find a better definition for it there.

“She wanted what was best for you. I can understand that,” Dean commented.

He turned his head to Emma, still sitting in her high chair. She wasn’t so much eating at this point as doing one of her interpretative sculptures with what was left of the puree in her plate. She was an artist. Maybe when she’d grown enough to understand she wasn’t supposed to eat them, Dean would get her some paintings and let her go crazy on old reports he didn’t need anymore.

“What do you think she’ll want to be when she grows up?” Jo asked, following his gaze.

“I don’t know.” Dean shrugged. “Whatever makes her happy, I guess.”

“Right.” Jo snickered. “I’d like to hear you say that when she decides she wants to have an arts degree.”

Dean tries not to look like she’d just punched him in the gut with that comment but he didn’t think he quite managed it. If Emma wanted to pursuit art as a hobby, that was perfectly fine, but as a career? She would have to live in a tiny rat-infested apartment. She would have to survive paycheck to paycheck. She would probably do drugs, too. It was an absolute nightmare. Why would Jo say something like that?!

For the look in his face, apparently, because she was laughing hard at him as she put away the ice bag back into the refrigerator.

“Anyway, thanks,” she said. “I would stay and watch your existential nightmare, but…”

The doorbell interrupted her. Dean frowned, as he didn’t remember they were expecting someone, but Jo didn’t seem surprise at all. Her face lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Oh, he’s here.”

“Who’s he? Why is _he_ here?” Dean asked. Jo was practically at the door, so Dean had two seconds to pick Emma up and follow her before she opened up.

There was a boy outside. Well, he must have been nineteen, maybe twenty years old, but from Dean’s perspective he was just a boy with dimples around in his cheeks and a far too friendly attitude when Jo gave him a quick hug.

“Hello,” he greeted her.

“You’re a bit early!”

“Well, I’ve been looking forwards to this all day,” he replied with a shrug.

Oh, he was smooth. Perhaps a little too smooth. Dean glared at him as he cleared his throat and Jo turned towards him again.

“So… this is my boss, Dean. Dean, this is Samandriel. He works at the grocery store,” she introduced them. “I call him Alfie.”

“Why?”

Both Jo and Samandriel chuckled like it was an inside joke he just wasn’t ready to understand. Why was that? Was there some sort of code for young people, giving each other’s random names like that?

“Nice to meet you, Dean,” Samandriel said, extending his hands towards him. “Or should I call you Mr. Winchester?”

Dean didn’t really care for that joke. Not because it was disrespectful or silly or anything like that. But because suddenly he was acutely aware of the nine years of difference between him and Jo. Of the fact she was still so young and figuring out what she wanted to do with her life and he was on the other end of the spectrum completely, taking care of his daughter, paying a mortgage.

And this kid, with his dimples and his blue eyes and his denim jacket…

“Mr. Winchester was my father,” Dean replied, trying to force out a smile. “You can call me Dean.”

He didn’t take his hand, though. He used the excuse of having to hold Emma to avoid it.

“Ah, hello, Emma,” Samandriel greeted her and made a funny face at her, puckering his lips out and crossing his eyes. To Dean’s immense satisfaction, Emma didn’t laugh at him, she just gave him the standard frown she gave to people who tried to be cute with her. “She’s not in the mood, huh?”

“She’s probably tired,” Jo explained. “We’re going to be late for our movie, so…”

“Yes, of course. Have fun.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye, bye, Emma!”

“Bah-bah!” Emma replied, waving her little hand at Jo.

Dean put her down and moved the curtain aside the second they stepped out of the porch. He watched them walking towards Jo’s Beetle with a sensation of uneasiness in his stomach that was only accentuated when Samandriel sneakily put an arm around Jo’s waist halfway in his garden. Jo didn’t push him or slap him away. Instead, she put her own arm around his shoulders, and by that point, Dean was feeling downright nauseous so he closed the curtain again and looked down at Emma. She was standing by his side with a curious expression on her face, like she was wondering what the hell he was doing spying on Jo.

Dean was wondering the exact same thing.

“She had a date. On a Monday night,” he complained later on the phone when Emma was already sleeping and he was supposed to be trying to do the same thing. “Who goes on a date on a Monday night?”

“People who work on weekends?” Sam suggested. “Also, people who can only use weekday discounts at the movies?”

“See, that’s a cheapskate move. He’s probably too cheap to give Jo anything nice.”

“Or he’s a broke college student who works part time at a grocery store,” Sam pointed out. “Honestly, you’re putting too much thought into this. Jo is allowed to have a life outside her job, you know?”

“Yeah, I know, that’s not what bothers me,” Dean said. Although, if Sam wanted to know what exactly it was that was bothering him, Dean wouldn’t have been able to define exactly, so he just started ranting before his brother had the opportunity to ask: “I just care a lot about her, you know? She’s been with us for so long, she sang at your wedding. She’s practically family. She’s like a… like a little sister that I never wanted…”

“Except she’s not,” Sam interrupted him. “She’s your babysitter. And yeah, she’s a very good girl, but she’s not family. And you’re just trying to micromanage this like you try to micromanage everything else when you’re afraid something might change.”

“That’s not true,” Dean argued, even though he knew in his gut that Sam had hit the nail in the head, as usual. “I’m not afraid of things changing. At all. You know why? Because they’re not going to. Not for a while, at least.”

“Okay,” Sam sighed. “You keep telling yourself that.”

 

* * *

 

The first sign that things were about to change came unexpectedly a Saturday morning early in September. Dean woke up to a shrill crying on the baby monitor and a sudden rush of panic that shook away any and all possible vestiges of sleepiness he might have had. Emma was usually awake early, but it was barely five in the morning. She was never awake this early and this crying wasn’t normal. He knew it in his gut that even before he ran barefoot to her room, even before he picked her up and placed a hand on her forehead. She didn’t seem to have a fever, but she’d cried the same way when she’d had colic.

“Hey, baby girl, hey,” he muttered. “Where is it? Where does it hurt?”

Emma opened her mouth to cry again… and a projectile of vomit came out of it. Dean managed to move her head to the side so as to avoid the bulk of it, but still some ended up splashing his feet and legs. Emma kept whimpering afterwards, but apparently the worst of it happened once her stomach was relieved. Dean had to pinch his nose to fight off his own nausea and try to keep his cool, the million things he had to do now running wildly on his head.

“Okay, sweetie, okay. You’re going to take a nap in the big bed while Dada cleans this, yes?”

He took her pajamas off so she’d be more comfortable and carried her off to the bed. Emma wriggled and twisted a little bit, uncomfortable still and with both hands over her tummy, but finally she settled down against the pillows and closed her eyes. Dean watched her closely until she drifted off to sleep, pushing his panic down and trying not to think about the thousands of viruses and illness that could cause this, one scarier than the other. He scrubbed the vomit from Emma’s carpet, all the time looking anxiously at the monitor and expecting to hear another scream.

Emma didn’t cry again, but by the time he was finished and came back into the room, she was sitting up and heaving. This time he had time to grab the bucket and put in front of her before the vomit came out.

“There we go, okay,” Dean muttered as he patted her in the back and calculated how long a drive to the doctor would take. Would Emma be able not to vomit in the car? Would she even last that long? What if she also had diarrhea? (He checked her diaper. They were in the clear for now). What about her fever? (She was only two degrees into it, but he still freaked when he saw the numbers go up) Wouldn’t it get worse if she wasn’t in bed?

Dr. Flagstaff was kind enough to take his consultation over the phone, even though it was still criminally early for a Saturday morning.

“Sounds like a stomach bug to me,” she said, trying and not entirely succeeding in suppressing a yawn. “Let her rest, keep her hydrated and give her light food. She should be better by Monday.”

“What if she doesn’t?” Dean asked, trying to keep his voice firm. “What if her fever gets worse or…?”

“Then you come straight to me,” Dr. Flagstaff replied. “Just let it run its course, Mr. Winchester. Toddlers get stomach bugs sometimes. If her symptoms aren’t gone in a couple of days, then you start worrying.”

Dean was already worried, but he figured that went without saying. He meticulously wrote down everything the pediatrician told her Emma was allowed to eat and carefully interrogated her about how much vomiting was too much vomiting and what to do if it seemed Emma was in pain rather than just uncomfortable and nauseous. Flagstaff was incredibly patient and understanding until Dean ran out of questions to ask her and excuses to keep her on the phone. Once the call ended and Dean was left alone with his anxiety, he took several deep breaths. He would be of no use to Emma like that. He needed to keep his head over his shoulders.

And he couldn’t go to the grocery store to get everything he needed because, dammit, it would be horrible for everybody if Emma just vomited on the aisles. No retail employee deserved that.

He was going to have to ask for help. He cringed at the idea, but it was an emergency.

His first option was Sam, of course, but it was Jess’ dad’s birthday, so they were both out of town. Castiel and Meg lived too far away and Benny… well, he wasn’t sure he trusted Benny with this. He was a great guy and all, but he would probably show up with beers on top of what Dean asked him to buy. Maybe if he was lucky enough to get Andrea on the phone instead of him… but that was too much of a risk to even consider. No, he needed someone who was closer and who understood his predicament.

Lisa’s phone rang five times before it went to voice mail. Dean gritted his teeth and decided perhaps she and Ben were still asleep. He would try again later. In the meantime, he could check what there was and wasn’t in his kitchen and what exactly he needed to…

Emma sighed very quietly and he stopped in his track, staring at her. Waiting. She didn’t get up and she didn’t start heaving again. So perhaps it was better to let her sleep and take the baby monitor with him and just listen attentively and…

“Dada?” Emma asked when he picked her, a cover and one of the pillows up.

“It’s okay, baby, it’s okay,” Dean promised her as he carry her off downstairs. “This is just so Dada can keep an eye on you.”

“Wata,” she asked for as he settled her down on the couch. “Dada, wata.”

“Dada will bring you water,” he promised. “Just give me a second, okay?”

Emma stared at him with eyes bright by the fever and beads of sweat forming in her hairline. Dean tried Lisa’s cellphone at least three times while rummaging through the kitchen and cursing under his breath. After the fourth time he was sent straight into voice mail, he gave up. Lisa obviously was too busy to help him, so he had left? The Carrigans? No, they were old and Emma hated them. Sid from across the street? He liked Sid, but he only greeted him passing by, he didn’t know him enough to just knock on his door out of the blue and ask him for a favor.

As he went through his contact list with growing concern, he realized the price of not participating in the potlucks and neighborhood barbecues was that he had no one to rely on. He had no one to call to, no one to help him out and no one to look after Emma should Jo ever…

Jo.

Dean hesitated with a thumb over the little phone icon by her name. His stomach churned with guilt for what he was about to do. Her contact picture was the one he had taken the first day she came to work, when she had been so patient and kind to listen to all his paranoid ramblings. She had always been helpful and just so, so good and…

He had no right to call her on her free day. He really had no right to make her come all the way there and he definitely had no right to expect her to say yes.

But he could always count on her before and well… he was very much desperate at that point.

He almost hanged up after the second ring. Jo picked up before the third one came through.

“Dean, what is it?” she asked, skipping the pleasantries like she knew he wouldn’t call her unless it was absolutely necessary. “Is everything okay?”

“I am so sorry to bother you.”

Dean explained the situation to her, profusely apologizing and without taking his eyes off Emma, who was still dozing off pacifically.

“Dammit, I can’t go,” Jo said. “We have a bar mitzvah in an hour and tonight Ash got us a gig in a bar from one of his friends who has a recording studio and…”

“It’s fine,” Dean said, his shoulders slumping. He really didn’t know what he was expecting. He was back to square one and his mind already trying to find another solution. “I totally understand. I’m sorry I bothered you…”

“But I’ll send someone to help you,” Jo added. “Yeah, she’ll be there in no time.”

When Jo said that, Dean imagined she’d call some friend that would stay there long enough for him to make a quick trip to the pharmacy and then demand a tip of some kind. He didn’t expect Jo’s old Beetle to park in his driveway an hour later and have an older, brunette, slightly angrier version of Jo get down from it.

“You Winchester?” she asked, sharply. “I’m Ellen.”

“Oh, you’re… Jo’s mom.” Dean cringed.

He had heard plenty of stories about Ellen Harvelle, and most of them ended with her losing her patience and kicking some drunken guy three times her size out of her bar. That, put together with how many times Jo had only half-jokingly told him Ellen didn’t think very highly of him even though they’d never met made Dean unsure that was the help he needed in this case.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Harvelle…”

“You should be,” Ellen growled as she opened the passenger door to retrieve a bag as big as Emma. “Shame on you for calling my girl when you know she’s busy ‘cause you can’t handle a simple indigestion. Men are so useless, I swear…”

She stomped inside the house. Emma, only half awake in the couch and looking miserable, blinked at her.

“Jo?” she asked.

Ellen’s demeanor changed entirely. Her shoulders relaxed and ten years seemed to just vanish from her face when she smiled.

“No, sweetie, I’m Jo’s mommy,” she explained, as she sat next to her and ran her fingers through Emma’s locks, soothingly. “I’m here to help your Daddy take care of you, okay?”

“… kay?” said Emma, still rather confused.

“How much has she vomited?” Ellen asked, turning her face towards Dean.

“A couple more times since I called Jo,” Dean said. At least he was relieved that Ellen seemed to know what this was like. “I tried giving her water, but…”

“You can’t give her water when she’s just finished vomiting!” Ellen snapped at him and Dean stepped backwards, scared by the vehemence of her voice. “You have to wait at least half an hour until her stomach has time to settle. No, little one, no, don’t cry,” she added, her voice turning so soft so fast it felt like a whiplash. “You’re going to get all better soon. And now your Daddy is gonna go and get you some magical juice to make you feel better,” Ellen said, glaring at Dean. Emma also looked at Dean, but her expression was pleading, like he was begging him not to leave her alone with the strange lady with the many voices.

“Maybe I should just…” Dean started, but Ellen cut him off with a frown that could put the fear of God in the most unrepentant sinner. Then she turned to Emma again, with the widest smile.

“Do you like puppets?” she asked. Emma nodded, hesitant. “Well, then I got a very special friend for you here,” she said. She took out the ugliest puppet in the world from her bag: it was a grey cat with an almost torn off ear and two buttons of different colors for eyes. “This is Raggedy the Cat.”

The name suited it. For a second, Dean was convinced Emma was going to scream bloody murder upon seeing that monstrosity, but she covered her mouth with her hands and giggled.

“Hello, Emma,” Ellen said, in a very acute voice, while moving the puppet’s small arms. “I heard you weren’t feeling very well today, so I came to keep you company. And your dad still isn’t moving…”

Dean took his cue. He only needed Ellen to stay half an hour while he hit the store, but he soon came to the realization that she wasn’t the kind of person who just let something halfway if she felt like she needed to take charge of the situation. As soon as he returned, she snatched the groceries from his hands.

“Go make sure she sees you. I’ve kept her calm, but she’s been asking for her Dada.”

That was the first of the several orders he received that day. Under Ellen’s relentless command and with more than one intervention from Raggedy, he managed to trick Emma into drinking a small entire bottle of water, to make her sit still during bath time and to feed her chopped pieces of banana. Ellen also had him taking her temperature every couple of hours and writing it down to make sure whether it stayed the same or went up and putting ice bags in her forehead.

“No, you idiot, you need to wrap it on something! She’s going to get frostbite!”

“I knew that,” Dean complained under his breath.

“Now, you keep her refreshed while I cook…”

“You’re going to cook? I mean, you don’t have to,” he added quickly when Ellen crooked an eyebrow at him. “I appreciate it and all, but you’ve done so much already…”

“You’re welcome,” Ellen cut him off and marched into the kitchen. Five minutes later, she complained that Dean didn’t have anything nutritive in there.

Still, she somehow managed to produce spaghetti and meatballs with tomato sauce. They sat on the dining room with the door open so they could check on Emma, who was peacefully sleeping again after her last session of puking.

“Is it normal that she sleeps this much?”

“Of course it is. Her stomach is all messed up, so she needs rest. Now, eat your lunch.”

She stopped short of adding something like “boy” or “son”, but it was implied in her tone nonetheless. It was ridiculous that this tiny woman was ordering him around like that, but Dean decided not to push his luck by protesting about it.

And besides, the spaghetti was delicious. He couldn’t remember the last time he had a good homemade lunch, because he always froze five to take with him to the office from Monday to Friday and on weekends he was too lazy to cook, so he took Emma out or ordered take in. Now that he thought about it; that was a terrible way to raise a child. He would need to start cooking again now that she was growing up enough to chew her meals.

“Thank you so much for this, Mrs. Harvelle,” he said, humbly when he finished his plate.

He meant to add something else, like he now knew why Jo was so good with children or that he couldn’t have handled this without her, but then Ellen shot him a stern look that shut him right up.

“Listen, I know what it’s like to raise a kid all on your own,” she said. “It ain’t easy. And Jo adores Emma.”

“Yeah, I…”

“That’s not to say you can just call her up whenever you feel like it or whenever you want to go out and get drunk with your buddies,” Ellen continued. “She’s still very young and has her own life to take care of. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Dean went completely quiet. Last time he had asked Jo to take care of Emma so he could go out with his friends had been for Sam’s bachelor party, but before that… God, he had really been abusing Jo’s good will to the point her mother had to step in and give him a slap in the wrist.

“Yes, of course,” he said. “It won’t happen again.”

“Good,” Ellen groaned. She picked up the dishes and completely dismissed Dean’s offer to help her wash them.

So Dean took that quiet moment to go sit on the couch by Emma’s side. His daughter opened her eyes and smiled at him. Her cheeks still looked red from the fever, but it had been three hours since the last time she vomited, so he took that as a good sign.

Ellen stuck around for another hour, asking him to double check everything so she wouldn’t have to come back and buy more for him. Dean assured her he had everything he could possibly need and walked her to the door.

“Again, thank you for coming.”

Ellen threw one last look at Emma before turning her attention back to him.

“You’re not doing half as bad.”

Coming from her, that was an outright compliment.

 

* * *

 

Jo called late that night to check up on them.

“Hey, how’s Emma doing?”

Emma was sitting on the rug, playing with Raggedy the Cat, throwing him away and crawling or running to get him back. She still wasn’t back in full force, but she was definitely a lot more cheerful than the day before.

“She’s better. We’ve got some more Exorcist episodes, but she doesn’t have a fever anymore.”

“Great to hear that,” Jo sighed. “Did mom give you a hard time?”

Dean’s first instinct was to deny it, but then again, Jo would know he was lying right away.

“She’s… she’s something, huh?”

“She’s a force of nature,” Jo agreed. “But you know… she might grumble and she might tease you, but she will always lend you a hand.”

That was about the most positive thing Dean had heard Jo say about her mother.

“Hey, if you need me to pick up anything before I go on Monday…”

“No, not at all. In fact, you don’t need to come on Monday,” Dean added. “Emma should be better by then, but I’m still taking the day off to keep an eye on her.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you for worrying about us.”

There was a silent pause at the other end of the line. Not long enough that it was weird, but far too long for Dean not to notice it had been there.

“Well, you know. I’m glad I can help,” Jo said in the end. It sounded like she had wanted to say something else, but at the last moment, she had decided to take it back.

“Shouldn’t you be giving a rock performance right now?” Dean asked her, remembering what she had told him that morning.

“Yeah, that,” Jo chuckled. “I’m actually outside the club right now and I should head back inside soon. But I just wanted to know how everything was.”

Something burned deep inside Dean’s chest. It was a mixture of appreciation and pride about the fact she was so dedicated to her music that her tone actually became much happier when she talked about it. At the same time, there was a sort of…

“Well, what are you waiting for? Go give them hell.”

“You got it. I’ll see you on Tuesday.”

Dean ended the call and held the phone against his lips, thinking. The other thing he was feeling was vertigo. Like looking down from a tall building at the concrete so many feet underneath him. He hated heights, because every time he was somewhere tall and he looked down, he could imagine himself falling, uncontrollably and powerless against gravity.

This was the same thing, except he had been powerless for a while and only now he was realizing it. Jo had been taking strides into the direction she wanted to go and perhaps without him even noticing, she was drifting further from them. Perhaps, as Sam had said, they were never that close to begin with. But Dean had never contemplated that one day he would have to deal with Jo not being there for them. He had assumed she would always be there, as constant as the rising sun.

He combed his fingers through Emma’s grown hair. The kid looked up at him tiredly, barely fighting off sleep. Dean had read as many articles as he could about kids sharing beds with their parents and he had been too terrified of smothering her in his sleep, but he figured they could make an exception that night.

He made sure Emma was sleeping before moving back to the table and turning on his computer. After staring at the blank search bar for several seconds, wondering if maybe he was growing too concerned about nothing that could still take years to turn into something, he typed out the words.

It was never too soon to learn about the daycare centers near his area, after all.


	12. Chapter 12

When looking back at that period of her life, Jo would always say that winter had been the craziest she ever had. Yes, even crazier than when she was going to college.

They started writing again. It was a slow, painful process because they couldn't always be together at once, so most of their ideas were communicated via phone or computer. Ash, in particular, was very fond of sending audio recordings with new melodies he was working on at the worst possible times. Jo had made the mistake to open one when Emma had just started her nap. It took her another half an hour to trick her into falling asleep again. Ash was lucky the riff was good.

When they managed to get together over the weekend, (usually at Ash's place since he didn't live with an overbearing mother or at a very small college dorm with roommates who were trying to study), it was always a couple of hours before they had to go play somewhere. Charlie recorded little videos of them covering some of their favorite songs and sometimes uploaded them online, but not too often because she "didn't want to anger the gods of copyright", her words. So they were trying to come up with more original material and they had actually managed to push out two or three good songs that were at the very least listenable. Jo changed the lyrics every time she could because they didn't convince her and her bandmates complained that she was a perfectionist.

The influx of weddings decreased as summer ended and temperatures grew colder, but people organizing birthday parties and homecoming dances were still calling them up to animate their events. The only reason Charlie turned them down was because they already had another concert that Saturday or Friday or even that Sunday. She juggled their paid gigs and their appearances at clubs and bars magnificently.

Ash had been okay with playing on some places for almost free ("Frank is a good buddy of mine and his bar is very popular so we would be lucky...") but Jo put her foot down on that after the third time they were asked to come back to the same place for nothing.

"You can tell Frank we have a homecoming dance. Where yes, we might be playing in front of a bunch of unappreciative teenagers, but you know what? We'll get paid for it."

"Yes. With actual money. Green money," Charlie added, as if that clarification was entirely necessary. "We're all about the Ulysses and the Benjamins."

"It's not selling out, really," Garth insisted when Ash's face turned somber. "It's just getting paid for our work. It's only fair."

Ash had weakly argued something about artistic integrity, but they refused to budge. The next weekend Frank had come back with a proposal that actually included some dollar signs. Jo had the impression he wasn't all too happy when she rejected that as well.

"Come on, you're not telling me you're gaining more for paying at Ashleigh's with a ‘I’ Sweet Sixteen," Frank groaned when Jo had told him they would even set a foot in the bar for the amount he was offering.

"Actually, we will get paid more on the hour," Jo said, shrugging. "So you either put up or we tell Ashleigh's dad we'll be more than happy to play at his daughter's party."

Frank had grumbled and muttered. It wasn't that Jo was trying to extort him for more money or something of the sorts. She just happened to know the bar was popular enough to draw a rather important crowd on the weekends and they happened to be aficionados to the brand of rock Jo and her band played. Frank usually hired bands and singers to entertain them, paying them very low commissions or not at all in exchange for "the exposure", but Jo thought they had enough of that between the events and other gigs around town. So they would be making pennies compared to that if they accepted Frank's offer without pushing a little bit.

Finally, Frank put his big hand on the counter and glared at her with tightened lips.

"Fine," he told her. "Only because last time you were such a hit that the kids keep asking about you."

Frank called all his clients "the kids", even if they were in their thirties. Jo had found that out rather quickly about him. He was an overweight, balding man who always seemed to be glaring at people behind his thick frame glasses. He was just as grumpy as her mother, which made Jo wonder if all bartenders had some sort of contractual obligation to be like that or if they became like that after years of dealing with drunk people. Either way, he didn't have a bad heart, so Jo let it up a little bit.

"I'll tell you what: you can lose some dollars if you give us a table to sell our merchandise."

"Do you even have merchandise?" Frank groaned, but he stretched his hand over the counter to shake hers. "Deal."

So there was that. The problem was, as Frank had so kindly pointed out, they didn't have any merchandise. Hell, they haven't even settled on a name yet.

"How are we supposed to produce merchandise if we don't have a brand?" Charlie complained when she informed them of the result of the negotiation later through Skype. "We need a logo, colors... maybe a signature look..."

"Charlie, Charlie, breathe," Garth told her. "It's not like the groupies are going to stop sleeping with you just because we don't have a cool name."

Charlie in fact got up to get a paper bag to breathe into. Jo couldn't tell if it was the thought of how many things they still needed to do to be an actual band or the fact they might be having groupies at some point in the future.

In either case, the question still stood: they needed to find a name.

"I say we should be call something like, really cool but also iconic," Ash said. "And if someone already has that name, we can add a number at the end."

"We're not adding a number at the end," Jo said.

"Why not? There are several cool bands with numbers. There's Blink 182 and... uh... let me think..." Garth mumbled.

"Okay, guys, give me two hours and I can compile a list of the most common band names and which ones are registered so we can't use them," Charlie said, as soon as she recovered her normal breathing pace. "While I'm at it, I might as well find out what are the legal and contractual obligations we have to fulfill to register our name. See you."

She waved at the camera and her corner of the screen went black.

"Our band shouldn't be named after something that has been successful before," Ash complained. "We should be like, our own thing."

"But we also want to honor all those bands and artists that have influenced our style, right?" Garth asked. "So maybe we should draw inspiration from them and then make up our thing. The way we do with the music, you know?"

"Right, right. Good thinking. But at the same time, we want it to be something brand new so we can be like, the next generation of music."

While Ash and Garth had their philosophical discussion about legacy vs. future, Jo got up to her desk and found an old notebook from college. She opened it in a blank page and stared at it for several seconds, toying with the pen in her hand. She started listing her favorite bands: The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Clash, The Who, The Cure...

All British. And all starting with a "The". She chewed the pen's tip. Obviously, the shortest, sweetest name would be something with a "The" and another thing. The Somethings. Yeah, sure, why not?

"But does it have to mean something?"

"Of course it has to mean something," Ash replied. "It has to be cool and mean something at the same time because this band means something to us, right?"

"Aw, that's very sweet," Garth said.

"Thanks, man. You're all important to me."

The Musicians. The Band. (That sounded a bit post-modern. She would have to ask Charlie if someone had come up with that already). The People Who Really Didn't Want to Go to College So They're Trying Their Hand at This. No, that was far too long and explicit. The Dreamers. Wasn't that a musical? The Chasers. The...

"The Hunters," Jo muttered to herself.

Something clicked inside of her mind. It was as if she had found a missing piece to a puzzle that had gone incomplete for far too long and now she could see the entire picture. Finally.

"What was that?"

"The Hunters," Jo repeated out loud as she came back to her bed and placed her computer on her lap. "We can be called The Hunters."

"Okay, I like it. It's strong, it's short..."

"But what does it mean?" Ash wanted to know.

"It means we're hunters," Jo replied. Her epiphany didn't translate well into words, but she was willing to give it a try. "As in, we want something, so we go after it. We hunt it. We're hunting this dream of living off music down and we're going to catch it, but when we do, we won't just stop. We'll just go hunting for the next big thing to make us happy."

She stopped babbling because she realized she wasn't entirely making sense. It had sounded so pretty in her head.

"That is awesome," Garth said, his eyes lightning up.

"I like it," Ash said, giving her a calm nod of approval. "Definitely. We're The Hunter. It's decided."

"Okay." Jo grinned. "Should we call Charlie again...?"

"Ah, leave her. We'll tell her when she comes back from her investigation spiral or whatever."

The band wasn't the only thing going on in Jo's life, of course. Giving Samandriel her number had turned out to be a very good decision. The boy was sweet, kind, the complete opposite of her ex-boyfriend. He was two years younger than her and studying architecture. He kept a small blue folder with the drawings he did on his spare time. Jo thought he had a lot of talent.

"You could actually sell this online," she told him when he show her small sketches of parks and neighborhoods he liked. "Make postcards or offer commissions."

"It's fine," he laughed as he gently pulled the folder from her hands. "I'll leave the artistic endeavors to you."

It was a shame that he thought his passion for drawing would take him nowhere, but Jo understood where he came from. Unlike her, he wasn't paying for college with patches of scholarships, lifetime savings and loans. His parents were paying the full tuition for him on the condition he kept his grades up and finished the career. Of course, in those conditions, dropping out wouldn't be so easy. And of course, he didn't seem to be life-threateningly miserable with his choice of study.

"I would love to go to New York," he told her once while they were walking around the neighborhood hand in hand. "See all those wonderful skyscrapers reaching out as far as the eye can see... wouldn't that be amazing?"

"Oh, my God, you're such a nerd," Jo laughed at him. "No, don't worry," she said, placing a peck on the tip of his nose. "You're a cute nerd."

Samandriel's face went red. He tried to pretend it was because of how cold it was getting, as if Jo would fall for that.

His parents might have been generous enough to pay his tuition, but they insisted he worked somewhere to pay his other expenses, like food or clothing. So he wasn't exactly swimming in abundance, but he had a nice margin of money to take Jo out on dates. He took her skating one time as the winter grew colder. It was a disaster: he could slide on the ice with the grace of a swan, but Jo kept falling on her ass over and over again. She laughed at herself until she was breathless and tears were spilling down her eyes and Samandriel was frustrated that she wouldn't pay him enough attention to even attempt to keep her balance on her blades.

"You're a mess. Stop it," he said, even though it was pretty clear he himself was trying to stifle his laughter. "Jo, oh my God..."

They ended up laughing together for fifteen minutes straight and disturbing the other people trying to skate. In the end, Jo's stomach hurt and her heart fluttered in her chest when Samandriel reached for her hand and helped her get out of the ice so they could put their boots back on. They crashed against each other and as he held her up so she didn't end up in the ice again, Jo did something she had been meaning to do for a while: she kissed him for a very long time.

They didn't have much in common. Samandriel was more of a whatever-was-on-the-radio kind of guy when it came to music and he wanted to take things slow. But they had a great time together and he was really easy to talk to.

"So how's Wonder Boy doing?" Dean asked sometimes, when Jo stayed behind to have a chat with him over a cup of coffee or, more recently, tea, since she slept better when she avoided caffeine that late. Her sticking around had turned into a nightly ritual, especially when it was cold and Jo was in no hurry to freeze her ass on the way to her car.

"He's doing great. Studying hard for his midterms," Jo told him. "I'm probably not going to see him until after Christmas."

"That's not good." Dean frowned. "You know, if he really cared about you, he would find the way for you to spend time together, no matter how busy he is..."

"Oh, my God, you sound like my mother." Jo rolled her eyes at him. But for some reason, his assortment had stung her, so she took out her cellphone and showed it to him. "He texts me every day. And he designed the logo for our band. Because I asked him to and he cares."

"The Hunters, huh?" Dean asked. "That's cute."

Jo didn't know why, but that bothered her even more.

"What, you don't think it's good?"

"No, it's good, it's good." Dean raised his hands defensively, as if he feared Jo would punch him. "If you like it then it's good. Hey, it's not the name that makes the band, but the band that makes the name."

"Really? Would Led's songs sound worse to you if they were called something lame?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know. The Somethings?"

Dean stopped for a second, as if he was actually considering it.

"Nah. It sounds lazy, like they didn't even try to come up with something more impressive."

"I rest my case," Jo said, smirking cheekily at him.

Dean chuckled and he looked so much younger when he did that. It brought up the crinkles around his eyes and his freckles, but also hid the bags underneath his eyes and the constantly worried gesture she was used to seeing in him. He should laugh more. It was truly a shame he didn't, because he was a very handsome man…

… who was still mourning his wife almost two years later. And Jo had a boyfriend. And honestly, this little crush she'd had on Dean since day one? It was easy to forget sometimes she still had it because of the familiarity and friendship that had grown between the two. But then something like this happened and Jo's stomach did a somersault and she caught herself thinking: "Holy shit, stop being so hot!"

She should have got over it ages ago, because she knew better than anybody that it could go nowhere. So why did she keep looking at him and wondering what it would feel like to kiss him, just one time? Because she was an idiot, that was why. She didn't feel guilty about it, though. As long as she didn't act on her feelings, they couldn't hurt anybody. They couldn't make things awkward with Dean or make Samandriel feel like he wasn't good enough for her. They just existed in that nebulous space that was the back of her head and sometimes they jumped forwards, but she could manage them when they did.

And so, life seemed to have found a rhythm, at least compared to what it had been the previous year. She looked after Emma, she laughed with Dean over the kitchen aisle, she played with her friends on the weekend and went out with Samandriel to the movies. Then she came home, usually to find her mother talking over the phone with Bobby.

"I don't care if it's old, you can’t go out without a scarf. You're going to get sick and then what? I can't go all the way over there to spoon-feed you chicken soup!"

They fought like an old married couple, if the one side of the conversation Jo got to hear was anything to go by. She could imagine Bobby grumbling and complaining at the other end and it made her smile. Not only because her mother's special brand of aggressive caring had found a new recipient, but because they both seemed to be more than alright with this long distance relationship thing they got going.

"For the last time, it's not like I'm dating Bobby," Ellen complained every time Jo made a joke about "her boyfriend". "We're just connecting 'cause we enjoy talking and we need the company. You know, because he doesn't have any family and you're home so little you might as well not live here anymore."

And there it was. But Jo had also got better at handling her mother's accusation.

"Well, would you rather have me here 'trying to figure out myself' all day?" she asked, drawing air quotes with her fingers.

Ellen twisted her mouth, but she admitted:

"No."

It happened so little that Jo got to win one of those that she decided not to push her luck. She didn't even smile while she placed the dishes and glasses on the table.

"Hey," Ellen called her. She had a bowl of mashed potatoes on her hand and for an entire two seconds, Jo assumed she was going to hand it to her and ask her to finish them. Her mother surprised her by saying: "You know I'll always cherish your father's memory, but I... I just get lonely and Bobby is there for me and..."

"Mom," Jo cut in. "It's okay."

Ellen blinked owlishly, as if she wasn't expecting that answer.

"Is it?"

"Yes, of course it's okay," Jo insisted. "I actually think Bobby's a good influence on you. What, you really thought I was going to believe you didn't protest me joining a band because you were just that chill?"

Ellen didn't even try to deny that wasn't the case.

"Bobby pointed out that you're an adult," she told her. "And I should just... you know. Accept that."

"I know he did," Jo said. She swallowed the impulse to add that she had been telling her mother the exact same thing for years. "So even if you get married to Bobby or something, I'm totally cool with it."

"Oh, who said anything about marriage? Heavens, no, we're too old for that. We're just a couple of old grumps, do you really see us living together?"

The answer to that question was yes, but Jo was not going to say it out loud. At least, not until Thanksgiving rolled around again and Bobby showed up and once more complained about traffic and motels and losing his favorite trucker hat and Ellen smiled like a high school girl seeing her first boyfriend after summer. Nope, she wasn't going to say it out loud until they did.

And to her surprise, they did it sooner rather than later. After they joked for hours, watched the football game and finally sat down on the table in front of more turkey they could possibly eat, Bobby cleared his throat. Ellen and Jo carried on the conversation, assuming he had gone out without a scarf and got sick after all. So he cleared his throat again, a little louder this time.

"You want some lemon tea?" Ellen offered.

"We have cough drops," Jo said almost at the same time.

"No, I don't want no tea or cough drops," Bobby said. He seemed irritated, like he couldn't believe they would just assume he was an old sick man with an itchy throat. "I have something to tell you, girls."

Ellen and Jo both stared at him, waiting. Bobby toyed with his fork and his knife, as if he didn't know how to say it. He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and announced:

"I'm selling the scrapyard. And the house, too."

The stunned silence that followed was not the response he was looking for, because he lowered his eyes almost immediately towards his turkey and tried to keep eating as if he had just commented on the weather. If he was trying to lighten the weight of what he'd just said, then it definitely didn't work.

"You're... why?" Ellen asked. "You've lived on that house since Karen..."

"Yeah, and that's exactly why." Bobby shrugged, still trying to pretend like it wasn't a big deal. "The house's too big for just an old geezer like me. I don't have the money or the energy to keep up with all the repairs it needs. Same with the scrapyard. I've been holding on to them for too long. And it's time to let go. There's nothing left for me in Sioux Falls."

Ellen's mouth was hanging slightly open, like she needed a bit of extra time to process what Bobby was saying. Jo, however, knew the answer to the question even before she asked it:

"Okay, so... where are you going to live now?"

Bobby cut his turkey into even smaller pieces without taking even one into his mouth.

"There's nothing left for me there, but, you know, there is here." He lifted his eyes at them. "You... girls."

Ellen covered her mouth with her hand as if she was trying not to cry. That lasted for exactly three seconds before she turned to him and said:

"You old fool."

It was a term of endearment and Bobby took it as such, smiling through his beard that had gone even grayer since last year.

"Of course, that's not to say that I'm going to be living here, here," he clarified. "But I just figured it would be nice to move somewhere I don't have to drive eight hours to see you twice a year."

"Yeah, that'd be nice," Jo giggled. "Don't you think so, mom?"

"I think it'd be amazing," Ellen agreed.

And then they were laughing. No one had told a joke or said something funny, but the three were just bursting out of pure joy. Because yes, it totally made sense for Bobby to move closer to them and honestly, it was so stupid they hadn't thought about it before. And her mom was happy and Bobby was happy and Jo was happy for them.

It was the best Thanksgiving they'd had in ages.

And afterwards, nothing could ruin Jo's holiday spirit. Not even the fact she had her first serious fight with Samandriel.

They had gone for lunch to the same deli house Dean and Jo had gone to ages ago, the day Dean told her how he'd met Emma's mom. Jo didn't know why, but things always, inevitably, ended up leading to Dean. Perhaps because technically she was still on the clock and technically, she shouldn't have brought Emma to meet with her boyfriend. She was sure she was breaching some sort of unspoken rule with that behavior, but they were both busy that week and Samandriel had said it was urgent, so…

“So I’ve been thinking… and I really like you a lot, Jo, believe me. I wouldn’t ask this lightly… can you pay attention to me?”

“Emma, no. Stop that,” Jo said, trying to wrestle away the paper napkins Emma was trying to put in her mouth. “Sorry, Alfie. What were you saying?”

He looked a little frustrated she had missed what was obviously a carefully prepared speech, but as soon as Jo turned her attention back to him, he grabbed her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“I need to ask you something,” he said, looking at her straight in the eye. “And this is very serious. I need you to say yes.”

Jo leaned back on the chair, baffled and a little bit scared about his intensity. Was this when the other shoe dropped? Was this when she discovered he wasn’t the sweet boy she took him for and he was actually some sort of weird psycho who wanted to propose after six months of dating?

“I’m begging you to please not say what I think you’re about to say,” she said, her eyes growing wider.

“Jo, I think it’s time we moved on to the next stage of our relationship.”

“Holy shit,” Jo muttered, wondering how far she could run through the tables while pushing Emma’s stroller. Maybe she would have a better chance if she just picked up Emma and sprinted away.

“Jo, would you do me the honor…?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“… of meeting my parents?”

She was so confused all she could do for several seconds was stare at him, dumbfounded.

“Come again?”

“I want you to come have dinner with us this Christmas,” Samandriel explained. “I’ve told my parents about you and they’re very excited to meet you.”

Jo opened her mouth and then closed it again. She wasn’t sure what the hell she was supposed to say to that.

“Well… I mean, that’s… that’s very nice,” she said, even though that was the exact opposite of what she was thinking. “And I… really appreciate it, but Christmas… it’s too much of a familiar holiday, right? I was going to spend it with my mom and Bobby and…”

“They can come too,” Samandriel declared happily, as if it was the most obvious solution. “I would be very glad to meet them as well.”

He was beaming like a fool, as if it was the best idea ever. Jo wished Emma started crying or trying to eat something she definitely shouldn’t be trying to eat, just so she could have an excuse to look away from her boyfriend’s eyes.

As things were, all she could was slowly pull his hand from him.

“That’s… yeah, I don’t think that’s a great idea.”

It still took a couple more seconds before the smile on his face disappear.

“What?” he asked, trying to chuckle as if he thought Jo was joking. It finally dawned on him that she was entirely too serious. “Well… why not?”

“’Cause… it’s just too soon,” Jo said. Okay, it wasn’t like he was asking to marry him, but meeting the family was serious business. Especially because Samandriel had told her his family was very conservative and Christian, so introducing a girl to them had to be a big deal. “Alfie, we’ve been together for a very short time. I don’t think… weren’t you the one who said we shouldn’t rush things?”

“Well, I didn’t mean about our relationship. I just meant the… you know, the physical part.”

He blushed as he said it. Jo could only stare at him and feel slightly sick to her stomach as she was beginning to realize many things. Why they’d never done anything further than just some light kissing. Why he always insisted on holding her hand but jump away when she tried to hug him too tight.

“Oh, my God. You’re… you’re not one of those people who think you should wait until marriage to have sex, are you?”

“No, not necessarily until marriage,” Samandriel replied. “Just… a relationship you know it’s going to lead to marriage eventually.”

“Okay, that’s… that’s fine,” Jo stuttered, awkwardly.

It wasn’t fine. The very fact the word “marriage” had come up not six months into their relationship wasn’t fine at all. They were just hanging around, having a good time. She didn’t think they would be having this serious a talk this early into their relationship. She never pictured herself getting marriage and having an apple pie life. She was in a stage of her life where, as many strides as she had taken towards figuring out herself, she still wasn’t entirely sure what the future could bring. She had thought that her relationship with Alfie would fall into place in time, just like everything else had.

“If it’s fine why do you look like you’ve just swallow a fly?” he asked, frowning.

“More like a wasp, actually. It’s stinging me inside right now.”

He didn’t seem to appreciate her joke. He blinked at her a couple of times and something changed in his face. As if he was suddenly seeing her in a completely new light.

“Is it really that important to you?”

“Well, it wasn’t until now,” Jo confessed. “Now that you brought it up, it’s just… yeah. I think I need a minute to process this.”

Samandriel didn’t give her a minute. He seemed to be entirely too disappointed to grant her even that.

“Why? What’s the problem? You don’t think our relationship is serious?”

“Of course I think it’s serious! I just don’t think it’s that serious,” Jo explained. She closed her eyes as the wasp stung her once more. “That came out wrong.”

“Oh, well, that’s unfortunate,” Samandriel said. His face was red and he was growing increasingly irritated. In fact, Jo had never seen him so angry before. “Because I do happen to think it’s very serious, because I love you.”

The minute the “L” word came out of his mouth, red lights started flashing inside of Jo’s head. Aaron had also told her he loved her after a very short time of dating. He’d told her they were predestined. He told her it was completely normal to say those things even though they were still meeting each other.

Aaron had been an asshole. He had broken her heart.

She wasn’t going to have that happen to her again.

“I have to go,” she muttered, ignoring the blood rushing in her ears. She automatically stood up. Money. She should pay, at least for her part of the lunch. She took out her wallet and put the bills on the table without even counting them.

“Jo… I didn’t mean to upset you,” Samandriel said.

“We’ll talk later,” Jo promised vaguely. She pushed Emma’s strollers outside the deli. She didn’t break into a run the minute they were on the street, but only because she used every ounce of her self-control not to.

She went back home… she went back to Dean’s house. It was Dean’s house and she only worked there. It wasn’t home, it was Emma’s home and she was only allowed in there for a few hours every day. But as soon as she crossed the door and saw the creamy walls and the couch and the shelves with books and Emma’s pictures, as soon as she breathed in the scent of lemon and coffee the house always had, she felt better. In here, she was safe. She was safe from the uncertainty of the future; she was safe from boys who told her they loved her way too soon. She could sit on the couch and hug Emma and she wouldn’t ask her why she was so shaken and why she seemed like she was about to cry, she would just hug her back, maybe wondering what that new game was.

“Jo!” she said, pulling from her hair.

“Yes, Emma,” Jo replied, breathing in deeply. “Yes, I’m here. I’m here with you. It’s okay. We’re home.”

“Kay,” Emma said, beaming up at her.

And it was almost too easy to believe it.

 

* * *

 

Jo thought she had pulled herself together enough, but the second Dean walked in through the door and took one glance at her, he frowned.

“Are you okay? You look… well, you don’t seem okay.”

“I’m fine,” Jo replied, a little too fast and a little too loud for it to be believable. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Dean didn’t fall for it. He took her hand, picked up Emma and guided them both to the kitchen. Usually it was Jo who placed Emma in the chair, put the kettle over the stove and made small talk while they waited for it to boil and Dean settled down after a long day of work. But that night, he did all of that. He even rambled on about his creep of a boss and how they had managed to get a new contract with a sun tanning lotion company that was going to be all around the next summer and how they were choosing the most creative potential ads…

“There you go,” he said, pushing the mug of tea in front of her. “Now, you want me to tell you about this new girl that ratted Zachariah to Human Resources or…?”

Jo chuckled at the idea, and the wasp in her stomach quiet down its buzzing. She could tell Dean. He was her friend. He would understand.

She was right. He listened to her attentively and didn’t even get mad at her for having taken Emma with her to the lunch.

“Woah, really?”

“Yeah.” Jo gulped down her tea. “So… that happened.”

Dean thumped his fingers on the counter, pensively.

“Well, that’s a bitch,” he commented. Jo had reached the same conclusion, so that assessment really wasn’t the helpful insight she was looking for.

“Really, that’s all you have to say?”

“No, I have many things to say to that boy,” Dean replied, with a soft growl. “How dare he make you feel like that? No one has a right to do that.”

“He didn’t know,” Jo said, but then she realized she was doing the same thing she’d done with Aaron: she’d defended him blindly even though her mother had warned him he wasn’t good for her. “He… he’s not like Aaron,” she said, and at least of that much she could be sure. “He didn’t say it to get me to do anything or because he wanted me to... he’s just… I think he genuinely meant it. He told me he’s never had a serious girlfriend before, so maybe he just doesn’t know what’s the appropriate timing for these things.”

“That might be it,” Dean conceded, although he still had his fist clenched too tightly around his own mug. “Still, if he made you feel uncomfortable, you don’t have to make excuses for him.”

“I’m not, I’m just… trying to figure out what to do,” Jo sighed and sank her face in her folded arms. “It seems I’m always trying to do that.”

A few seconds later, Dean’s hand came to rest on her forearm. It laid hesitantly there, but since Jo made no effort to move it away, he gave her a little consoling squeeze. Slowly, Jo raised her head at him. There were bags under his eyes and his skin was losing the tan he had gained over the summer. He looked tired. He always looked tired. He probably wanted to put Emma to bed and catch some sleep, not deal with her relationship drama. Still, he was making the effort to listen to her and Jo couldn’t have been more thankful for it.

“What do you think I should do?” she asked. She could ask him. He wouldn’t patronize her or try to give her a lecture about relationships and what they were supposed to be like.

“Well, do you like him?” Dean asked. “Do you still want to be with him?”

Jo searched inside of her half empty tea mug. The answer wasn’t really there.

“If he really cares, then he can wait until you’re on the same page as him,” Dean declared. “You’re right, you can’t rush it. Love shouldn’t be a series of touchstones you need to reach as soon as possible, you know? It should be… it should feel like coming home.”

Jo raised her gaze and Dean lowered his as his cheeks grew redder, as if he was embarrassed out of the sheer cheesiness of what he’d just said.

“What do I know, though? Maybe kids these days are just into not doing the horizontal mambo until after they put a ring on it.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Too bad?”

“Awful,” Jo confirmed, with a little nod. Dean shrugged apologetically and she laughed in his face. The wasp in her stomach was completely silent now. It may have even died away.

He walked her towards the door as he always did. But this time he walked a little closer to her, almost as if he wanted to shield her from something, even though none of them knew from what.

“Thank you, Dean,” Jo muttered.

“Hey, whatever you need,” he assured her. “Be careful, okay? I wouldn’t want anything to happen to that big heart of yours.”

Jo put her arms around his neck and pulled him close for a hug. She didn’t know why she did it. It was totally inappropriate and not a thing they did unless there was some sort of special occasion going on. She just needed to gather as much warmth from his as he could before facing the cold December night, feel his arms around her for one moment before she went back to her actual home and had to go through with the unpleasant task of talking to Samandriel about things that none of them wanted to talk about.

“Okay,” Dean muttered after a few seconds, patting her in the back.

Jo stepped back and forced herself to smile at him. Except she wasn’t forcing it. Not really. Never for him.

“Goodnight.”

“Drive carefully,” Dean recommended her when she stepped down from the porch and started making her way to her car. “Call me when you get there!”

Jo raised a thumb up at him and got inside of her car. She waited for him to close the door and go back inside, but he stood on the doorway watching her. It was obvious he was waiting for her to leave, so she gave him a little wave and started the engine.

Only then he retreated into the house, but out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a curtain moving as she sped down the empty street.


	13. Chapter 13

“I don’t know, Madeleine. She’s still too little.”

“She’s old enough to understand the concept of a father and a grandmother,” Madeleine replied, in her usual _‘I’m right and you’re wrong’_ tone of voice. “She’s going to start asking about her mom soon enough.”

“She’s two years old. She thinks there’s a giant spider hiding in her closet, waiting to eat her.”

“Is there?”

“No, I cleaned it every other… that’s not the point,” Dean groaned.

“Of course not. The point is you should be teaching your daughter spiders aren’t able to eat children.”

If he didn’t know Madeleine better, he would have said she actually had just made a joke.

“Still. I don’t think we should be taking her to the cemetery this year,” Dean argued. “She’s still far too young. I’m not comfortable with it.”

“Okay, fine,” Madeleine sighed. That had to be the fastest she’d given up on something since Dean met her. In fairness, she sounded tired. “But you can’t avoid it forever, you know. She has to know about Lydia.”

Dean wasn’t arguing that. He remembered waiting until his father was drunk just to probe him for whatever scraps of information John was willing to slur about his late wife. He remembered how much they treasured the very few pictures they had of her. Hell, he still kept them carefully hidden away, fearful that the contact with the air might ruin them. He knew Lydia’s memory had to be a part of Emma’s life, because it was fair, because it was her mom and part of her identity.

But she was still so damn young. She had no idea what death was and he didn’t want to tell her just yet.

It was also true that she was growing fast. The marks on the doorway had got higher and higher as the months passed by. She looked at the world with wider eyes, as if she was trying to take it all in, when they went out together. One time, Dean had stopped midway into dressing her to pick a call on his phone and when he turned to look at her again, he found out she had already pulled her dress down and slip the arms into the sleeves. It was inside out, but the fact she’d put it on herself was still mesmerizing.

She was also incredibly smart. She couldn’t read the titles, but whenever he told her to go pick for a book, she usually brought _Horton Hears a Who_ , which meant she liked that one in particular for some reason. She sat on his lap and listened to him attentively, looking at the pictures and pointed at Horton every time his name came up. She was slowly but surely learning to color inside the lines. She piled up her blocks in elaborated buildings just to tear them down with cheerful laughter. She liked to ride the tricycle Madeleine had got her for Christmas inside of the house (because it was just so damn cold outside still) and she babbled the song lyrics and threw her hands up to dance whenever Dean put on music.

One night, he came back from work to find Jo and Emma were having a full on dance party. They had moved the couch a little to the left and _Here Comes the Sun_ was blasting from the stereo. Jo sang along at the top of her lungs while holding onto both Emma’s hands, who was standing on Jo’s feet and swinging and laughing.

_Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter_

_Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here_

_Here comes the sun_

_Here comes the sun, and I say_

_It's all right…_

He was so overwhelmed by the sheer cuteness of the scene he couldn’t bring herself to interrupt them, so what he did instead was throw his briefcase to the side and join them. Emma ran towards him as soon as she saw him. He grabbed hers and Jo’s hand and spun them both around. Emma discovered her dress could twirl, so she started moving and laughing as she did. Jo put an arm over her shoulder and without thinking too much about it; he placed his around her waist. They clumsily waltzed over the carpet, beaming like idiots the entire time.

_Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting_

_Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear_

_Here comes the sun_

_Here comes the sun, and I say_

_It's all right_

Jo had her chin on his shoulder and their hips swayed in rhythm with the song. Dean didn’t realize that they were so close until the song ended and she moved away a little, her dark eyes shining and her smile wide and clear. If he moved a little more, their noses would be brushing against each other and he could feel her breath and her soft blond hair over his face…

“Dada!” Emma called, tugging gently from his shirt.

Dean stepped away and allowed himself a second to stop thinking about Jo’s lips before turning to his daughter with a smile.

“Hey, there, little monster,” he said, as he picked her up and kissed her on the forehead. “What’d you do all day?”

Emma started babbling excitedly about the park and the birdies while Jo chuckled and quietly turned off the music in the back.

“She ran around a lot,” she informed Dean. “She should be all tired out.”

Dean doubted it. He could see Emma’s eyes lit up and her beam and he knew right away it was going to take ages to get her to settle down. But on the other hand, he was in no rush. The following day was Saturday, so he could spend the rest of the night tricking Emma into falling asleep if it was necessary.

“She’s not the only one who needs a good night sleep,” Dean said, looking at Jo. “You need your energy if you’re going to kill it tomorrow.”

Jo frowned at him as if she didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Oh,” she said when she understood. “No, we don’t have a show tomorrow. But I am going out with Samandriel.”

She mentioned it happily and easily. After that fight they had back around Christmas, Jo and her boyfriend had patched up their differences and apparently they were in a good place again.

“We talked it over. A lot,” Jo had told him when he’d asked her about it. “And we’re… we’re going to see where it goes. He admitted he might have jumped the gun and I admitted I was just biding my time instead of thinking of it as something serious. So…”

“That’s great,” he’d said then.

“That’s nice,” he said now. He didn’t mean it either time.

Not because he thought Samandriel was a bad kid or anything. Jo had given him no reason to think that way and in fact, she seemed pretty happy about it. It was just his protective instincts kicking in. It always happened when he got attached to people: he felt the urge to protect them, from whatever real or imaginary threat. It was just the kind of person he was. He couldn’t help it.

And he also couldn’t help the comment that came out of his mouth next:

“Should you be going out with him, though? I mean, you’ve been working very hard with the band. It may not be a good idea to just ditch them for a date.”

Jo didn’t say a word, but she did crook an eyebrow. It seemed like she was trying to figure out if he was serious or not.

“It’s fine. We’re all going to be busy,” she told him. “You know, since it’s Valentine’s Day.”

Dean mentally did some calculations in his head and discovered she was right. He could have sworn Emma’s second birthday had been just last week, but he blinked and they were in the middle of February already.

“When did that happen?”

“While you were making plans for the summer with your precious sun tanning ads,” Jo replied, cheekily. She put on her jacket and waved at them. “Bye, bye, Emma!”

“Bah-bah!” Emma replied, waving enthusiastically.

“And goodnight, boss,” Jo added. “You make a great dancing partner, you know?”

“And you haven’t even seen my best movements,” Dean chuckled as he walked her to the door. “Take care. Drive carefully. The roads are a mess!”

Jo responded to his recommendations with the same wave as always. Dean still remained in his spot by the window until her car was swallowed by the night, and only then he drew the curtains shut and turned towards Emma again.

“Well, what do you say we get a nice warmth bath and put you into bed?”

Emma was on board with that plan. Still, while Dean was rubbing her back with a sponge, she kept her eyes fixed on her yellow duckie as if she was trying to figure something out.

“Dada, where Jo go?” she asked.

He wasn’t expecting that. He assumed Emma was used to that routine: Jo came in the morning and she went away in the afternoon. He didn’t think she would get curious about it.

“Well, she goes home, sweetie,” he told her. The books said you should always tell kids the truth, but keep it simple for them to grasp it. “She’ll be back tomorrow. You ready to come out?”

Emma stood up and let him wrap her in a towel. She laughed when he rubbed her harsh to leave her dry and obediently raised her hands over her head so he could help her into her pajamas.

“I think you’re growing too big for this,” he commented as he lowered her into the cot. “How about this weekend we go get you a bed? You’re a big girl. You can handle it.”

Dean discovered he made many decisions regarding Emma’s development that way: suddenly and without dwelling too much on them, because if he did, doubt and the fear that his girl was growing and he was missing out on it paralyzed him. So he was taking the band aid approach lately.

Emma didn’t seem to understand exactly what he was telling her, too busy hugging Mr. Eight tight to her chest. She looked at her closet with a worried scowl, so Dean made sure to close the ddoor with a grand gesture to reassure her that the Giant Spider couldn’t get to her.

“Ready to sleep, baby girl?”

She nodded and grabbed his hand over the coat. Dean breathed in deeply and started singing:

_Hey Jude, don't make it bad_

_Take a sad song and make it better…_

Jo hadn’t been wrong on her assessment that Emma would be tired. She was asleep even before he reached the second verse. He gently settled his hand over her chest and waited in silence. It wouldn’t be the first time Emma gave him false hope only to stir awake the moment he moved away from the crib. But she was genuinely asleep, so Dean tiptoed out of the room and shut the door close.

He didn’t think about what was really worrying him until he was underneath the hot stream of the shower, trying with all his might to stay awake. That was when the memory of Jo’s body close to his and the floral scent of her shampoo and her tiny hands on his hit him in full force.

What the hell had he been thinking? Jo obviously hadn’t taken it badly, but he couldn’t get her out of her mind and it was… doing things to him. Goddammit, it had been too long. He didn’t even keep magazines in the house or watched videos on the Internet, too afraid Emma might see something he definitely didn’t want her to see.

Nobody had prepared him for that. He still missed Lydia like hell. Less and less as the days went by, that was true, but he was still painfully aware of her absence sometimes, at night, when he rolled over in his sleep to find the other side of the bed empty and cold. And it wasn’t like sex held that much importance for him… well, no, yeah, it did. It definitely did. He liked sex and that was perfectly human and perfectly normal. He had promised he would only have sex with one woman for the rest of his life, but now that woman was gone. And he still liked sex. And even though he had tried with all his might to think he didn’t need it, to think he could do without it for the next eighteen years until Emma moved out of the house… or maybe even for the rest of his life…

Well, there he was. Having thoughts he definitely shouldn’t be having about Emma’s babysitter. And who was nine years younger than him. And who had a boyfriend. That was sad in so many ways.

He wrapped a towel over his waist and stepped off the shower. He kept an ear over the baby monitor, but everything seemed to be calm and silent. He slipped into his pajama pants and without thinking too much about it, he pulled out Lydia’s portrait from his drawer and placed it over his night table. He opened his mouth, but he didn’t even know how to begin explaining himself.

“Look, I love you,” he said, in the end, as if he needed to justify it. “And I miss you. I don’t think that’s ever going away. But I’m so… I’m so lonely, Lydia. I miss having someone to talk to me, to… I have the guys, I guess, but it’s not quite the same. Is it… is it bad that I want someone that’s here, with me?”

Because that was just the thing. It wasn’t just that he wanted to get laid, it was that he had no one to share the little, everyday things with. No one to talk to late into the night while falling asleep, no one to wake up to in the mornings. It didn’t matter how many videos he sent to Madeleine or how often he talked to Sam on the phone or how many nights Jo stayed to have a coffee with him. He didn’t have that… intimacy with anyone else. And on top of it, he felt guilty as hell for wanting it.

Lydia smiled radiantly at him from her portrait, forever frozen in her beautiful wedding gown. She offered him no response.

“What would you want me to do?” he asked, rubbing his temples. “I mean, I guess you wouldn’t want me to be miserable, but there’s so many things… it’s not just me. It’s Emma too,” he said, suddenly realizing he had forgotten to consider the single most important thing. “She hates strangers. And of course, no one can replace you. At all. She’s too little, and maybe it would be a terrible idea if I start… seeing someone and she grows up to think that’s her mother. No. I can’t do that to her, and I can’t do that to you. It’s not fair.”

He breathed in deeply, relieve as if someone had taken a heavy burden off his shoulders. He was just so glad to find an excuse to close that door, to stop picking at a scab that just didn’t seem to heal. He couldn’t date anybody because Emma needed to know who her mother was and because he had to respect his wife’s memory.

And if he sometimes caught himself looking at Lisa Braeden’s lips or the little cleavage of his secretary while she leaned over to pick up the memos (because this wasn’t a phenomenon that happened around Jo, specifically, not at all, why would it be?), then he would have to suck it up. Like he had sucked up the sleepless nights and the dirty diapers and everything else that came with having a little human being in his charge. He simply couldn’t afford to care about his loneliness until Emma was old enough to understand why he wanted someone and how that wasn’t ever going to change the fact that she came first, always and forever.

And even then, he might not find someone that’d be right for them. So he was completely jumping the gun on this. He didn’t even have to think about it for now and that was perfectly fine.

“Okay,” he muttered to himself with a deep sigh. “I’m actually glad we had this talk, baby.”

He stretched his hand to put the portrait away again, but at the last second, he decided to leave it there. It was good to have her company that night, even if it wasn’t true. Even if it would vanish with the daylight.

 

* * *

 

“Okay, we did the sound proof and everything seemed to be fine,” Charlie told him, speaking fast like she did when she was growing increasingly nervous. “But the new woofers have a lot of cables and you need to be careful if you stepped on them and…”

“We know, Charlie,” Garth said, patiently patting her in the back.

“Jo, you need to not move too much. If you’re going to do some sort of crowd surfing, you have to remember to skip the cables or you could seriously hurt yourself…”

“I know, Charlie,” Jo replied. She was trying to stay patient with her, but their friend just seemed far too nervous that day for reasons she couldn’t quite understand.

“Listen to her, okay?” Samandriel said, throwing and arm around Jo’s shoulders. “I wouldn’t want you to get hurt on the first time I come to see you perform. You might start thinking I’m bad luck to have around.”

“Aw, of course you’re not bad luck,” Jo replied, throwing her head back to kiss him on the cheek. “I actually think this might be our best performance ever.”

“You guys are so sweet I’m going into a diabetic shock right now,” Garth commented.

“Oh, no. Can’t it wait until after the show? It’s not funny, guys. We should really focus…”

They still continued to laugh at her for a while. Charlie always freaked out when something big was about to happen and honestly, it wasn’t like they could blame her. Charlie’s freak outs were the thing that pretty much kept The Hunters from making any sort of ugly mistakes. But today she seemed like she was going slightly out of her mind, biting her nails and pacing the backstage.

Well, the backstage was little more than a glorified storage room. Frank had moved the boxes aside and installed a couch that was about to fall apart, with the stuffing and some of the springs poking through, and a water-cooler on a corner that was always empty. So they had to sneak in beers from behind the counter and drank that when their show was over. Jo didn’t think that was entirely healthy, but even in the middle of the winter the bar was hot as a hellish trap and they were in serious risk of becoming dehydrated. Besides, it was always nice to end the show, have a drink with friends and laugh as if they were running faster than the future, as if it was never going to catch them at all.

She was thinking maybe she should have written that down for a future song when there was a knock on the door. They looked at each other, confused: Frank usually was too busy to come say anything to them and the young singer that was performing before them wasn’t finished yet. Anyone who wanted to talk to them (and they had some regular “fans” who always came by to congratulate them) usually waited until the show was over. Ash opened his mouth to ask something but Charlie was already jumping to the door and pulling it open hurriedly.

“Hi!” she said to the girl on the other side. “You made it!”

“I wasn’t going to miss it,” she replied, walking into the room with the confidence of someone that owned everywhere she stepped with her high heel boots. She had olive skin, long brown hair and bright blue eyes and she proceeded to shake everyone’s hand with confidence: “Hello, I’m Dorothy. Charlie’s told me lots about you.”

So now Charlie’s off the charts nervousness made perfect sense. She had invited a date to the show. Jo tried to hide her amusement by smiling at Dorothy and trying to come up with an embarrassing fact about Charlie to tell her.

“Hi, she’s told us nothing about you,” she said, when Dorothy stopped in front of the couch where she and Samandriel were chilling.

“Really?” Dorothy said, arching an eyebrow before turning to Charlie. “I thought you were going to share everything about me right there.”

“Well, I was going to,” Charlie confessed, scratching her arm. “But then I wasn’t sure if you be coming and I didn’t want them to get overexcited or…”

“Why would we be excited about meeting your new girlfriend?” Ash asked, his fingers lazily moving over the guitar. “You have one every other week.”

Charlie glared at him, as if that information wasn’t supposed to leave his lips. Jo and Garth chuckled and to their surprise, Dorothy did too.

“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “As fun as it would be to get it on with Charlie dear, I’m here on business.”

That definitely managed to get their attention.

“Dorothy’s from LA,” Charlie explained. “Her dad has a record label and Dorothy’s job is to look for new talents around the Internet…”

“Is that really a thing you get paid to do?” Samandriel asked. “Just go online and listen to new bands all day?”

“It’s harder than it looks,” Dorothy replied. “But you guys caught my eye, so I contacted Charlie and she invited me to check them. And I told myself ‘What the hell. A road trip’s never bad for anybody’.”

She said it as if her presence there didn’t put a whole new spin on that night’s performance. Jo had thought she was going to try to outdo herself just for the fact her boyfriend was there. Maybe to shove it a little in his face that this was something she could do and do well. Not because Samandriel had said something about it, mind you, just he had been trying to subtly suggest maybe she could still go back to college and Jo had been subtly telling him that she would rather pluck her own eyes out.

And Dorothy hadn’t made any serious offer, but…

Ash leaned over. His eyes were glimmering with interest.

“So, what kind of studio does your label have?”

Dorothy couldn’t exactly give them too many details, because right then a courteous applause came from the bar. The girl who had been performing before them descended from the stage. She looked pale and was trembling slightly, her hands holding tight onto her guitar. It was obvious she was going through the latest symptoms of a severe stage fright.

“I blew it,” she muttered as she leaned against the wall.

“No, come on!” Jo stood up and put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “I’m sure you did great! Krissy, was it?”

Krissy looked up at her, blinking rapidly to get rid of the tears. She was a short brunette girl with a small beauty mark underneath her eye. Jo was entirely too certain she wasn’t old enough to be performing there, but if Frank hadn’t bothered to ask for her age, she wasn’t about to humiliate her by doing so anyway.

“Look, even if it was bad, it doesn’t matter,” Jo continued telling her. “What matters is, you tried it, and now you know you can be better.”

It sounded like the cheapest motivational speech ever pronounced, but it worked. Krissy wiped away her tears and forced a smile for her.

“Thank you,” she muttered with a broken voice.

“Hey, why don’t you stay and watch the show?” Jo invited her. “And afterwards, we can have some… non-alcoholic drinks.”

Charlie raised her thumb up at her. Garth looked at the almost completely empty water-cooler and then back at Krissy and Jo.

“Well, that’s going to be kind of an issue…”

“We’ll get some,” Jo promised. “Why don’t you go with Dorothy and Alfie and watch the show, okay?”

“Okay,” Krissy muttered. She moved to put her guitar back in her case, which was right next to Ash’s.

“Hey,” Ash said. When Krissy turned to look at him, he extended his pick towards her. “Rock on, girl.”

A shy smile appeared on Krissy’s lips, but Jo and the rest didn’t have much time to pay attention to it. Frank was calling them on stage right then and they had to go before he got mad and threatened with firing them. For the fourth time that month, but who was counting?

They stepped on a stage in the middle of cheering from the regulars and the same distrusting applause from the people who were new there. Krissy must have been really not that great if they were this cold, but Jo wasn’t about to let that bring her down.

“Hello, everybody, we’re The Hunters!” she said, hanging onto the mic.

Ash played a riff to wile the crowd out and then they were off. The crowd started jumping in rhythm with the beat of Garth’s drums and chanting the lyrics back at Jo when they played a song everybody knew. The air was filled with electricity and deafening screams and clapping.

She didn’t know what it was: maybe the fact they had just seen this little girl almost crying thinking she wasn’t good enough or maybe that a person with actual contacts in the industry was there. But that night they played with a sort of energy they had never even once experienced before. Almost as if that night they had to put everything they had on display so they could see.

So Krissy could see she could improve still.

So Samandriel could see this was what she really loved to do.

So Dorothy could see it was worth it to take a chance on them.

They were sweating like pigs and gasping for air by the fourth song, but they didn’t let themselves take a breath and neither did the crowd. Most of the bar’s patrons had gathered around the stage, leaving only a space at the back and Jo didn’t miss the chance. While Garth started one of his drumming solos, she dropped the mic to the stage and dived into the crowd without even thinking twice about it. Dozens of hands rose up to catch her and Jo extended her hand and close her eyes, laughing out of pure ecstasy, blinded by the strobe lights and deafened by the scream and the music.

That moment right there; that was the reason she did it. That pure bliss, that connection…

There was nothing in the world quite like it. And she wouldn’t have traded it for anything.

 

* * *

 

Later that night, they had a celebration like never before. The adrenaline and a strange sensation of triumph were running through their veins, making them invincible only for that night. Frank didn’t protest that they drank his beer, telling them “You’ve earned it, kids”. He left them the keys and told them not to party too hard, which of course, they proceeded to do anyway. Krissy stayed for a coke or two, timidly thanking them again for their support before she left the bar. Jo made sure to get her number and asked her to text her when she got home. Around five in the morning, the bar was empty except for them. Garth started telling all sort of funny stories nobody was all too sure they understood, but they laughed along anyway.

“Party on, Garth,” Ash laughed when Garth, far too drunk to keep saying anything, hid his face on his arms and started snoring loudly.

“Best night ever,” Charlie concluded. She always seemed happy and relaxed after the show was over and it wasn’t until the following week that she started fretting again. But for now, she was leaning far too close to Dorothy and speaking to her about business as if it made any sense for them to do so with so much alcohol fogging their heads: “You see, we’re very, very serious about this. And we’re like… very professional. You heard our covers? We only do covers because we don’t have enough of our own songs, but Jo’s been writing them… Jo, show her the songs…”

“Maybe later, Charles,” Jo laughed.

She was giddy and she was far too comfortable snuggling against Samandriel. She probably should go to sleep soon, or at least get some sleep over those couches. Or the floor. Wherever.

“You were… you were very pretty up there,” Samandriel commented. He’d only had a couple of beers (that she could notice), but he was slurring his words nonetheless. “You looked so radiant. Like an angel.”

“Oh, stop it,” Jo said, giggling. “You’re the angel.”

Even in her inebriated state, she realized it was a stupid, corny thing to say, but she couldn’t really bring herself to care. She gave him a kiss and Ash coed at them (granted, it might have been sarcastic) and Charlie shook her head.

“You should… you should concentrate,” she muttered. “We have to… talk to Dorothy…”

“It’s fine, Red,” Dorothy laughed. She had drunk less than anybody and that was why she looked fresh as cucumber while the rest of them were stumbling on their own tongues. “I saw plenty. Don’t worry.”

“Oh, but we haven’t even discussed…”

They never found out what Charlie wanted to discuss. She leaned her head against the wall and a second later, she was snoring softly just as Garth.

“Look, you seem like a nice person,” Ash said, taking the conversation from where Charlie had dropped it. “Like, you really get what this is all about, you know? You’re not like… a suit trying to make a quick buck. I like you.”

“Well, thanks,” Dorothy said. It was obvious she was barely keeping her laughter in check. “I’m glad you think that.”

“Yeah, be glad,” Jo said. “Ash is usually adamantly anti industry.”

“It’s not… it’s not that I don’t get that you’re trying to do a job,” he said. No one realized that his words made little to no sense. “I’m just… hope you understand this is not a job for us. I mean, we can take it seriously as a job, but it’s not a job, do you understand?”

“I think I do,” Dorothy said, between chuckles.

“Good, good,” Ash nodded, satisfied with that answer. “That is… yeah, so good.”

And he was the next one to follow Charlie and Garth into the land of drunken slumber.

“They’re going to have such a hangover tomorrow,” Jo said, as if she wouldn’t.

“I know,” Dorothy said calmly. “Which is why I am setting our reunion for the night.”

“We’re having a reunion?” Jo asked, tilting her head in confusion.

“Yep,” Dorothy said. She was scribbling something in a notepad Jo didn’t see where she got from. She ripped the page, folded it carefully and placed it inside of Charlie’s jacket. “You call me when you’re all better and we’re going to have dinner, okay?”

“Okay,” Jo said. Had she been sober, she would have grasped the immensity of what Dorothy was saying, but because she wasn’t, all she could do was nod like an idiot and smile. “Thank you. We’ll see you.”

Dorothy clicked her tongue and waved at them before she got up and strode towards the door.

“She’s… she’s pretty awesome, isn’t she?” Jo asked.

But Samandriel was also slepping against her shoulder. She was the only one awake at that point. With a little shrug, she used her own arm as pillow and closed her eyes.


	14. Chapter 14

The night Dean found out he was going to lose Jo started like every other night.

He walked in with his head aching after a long day at the office, put his briefcase down and loosened his tie.

“I’m home,” he called, but nobody answered. No Emma running up to him yelling “Dada!” at the top of her lungs or Jo peaking her head outside the kitchen’s door to greet him with a smile on her face.

In fact, the house was unusually silent. Frowning, Dean went into the living room and found out the reason: the girls were deeply slumbering on the couch, Emma with her face tucked under Jo’s neck and Jo with such a peaceful expression Dean almost felt bad having to wake her up.

He told himself that was the reason he stood in the middle of the living of the room for so long. Not because he was staring at her sleeping features like a freaking creep.

“Hey,” he put a hand on her arm and rocked her softly. “Jo, I’m home.”

Jo protested something about being too early, “mom”, but Emma raised her head right up.

“Dada!” she called, extending her short arms at him with a drowsy smile.

“Hello, baby,” he said, picking her up as delicately as he could not to wake Jo up. “Long day?”

“Missed you,” said Emma and she promptly fell asleep again with her face on Dean’s shoulder.

Dean chuckled to himself and tiptoed upstairs to leave her in her bed. He had just finished tucking her in when a panicked “Emma?”, followed by Jo’s hysterical footsteps, echoed on the hall. Dean closed the door right in time to turn and have her practically bumping into him.

“She’s asleep,” he whispered, putting a finger against his lips.

Jo rubbed her face and hid a yawn behind her hand.

“I’m sorry,” she said, in the same low tone. “I didn’t even hear you come in.”

“Yeah, you were knocked out cold,” Dean laughed. “Come on, I’ll make you a coffee. Looks like you’ll need it if you’re driving home.”

Jo was so tired she didn’t even protest.

“How was work?” she asked, as the coffeemaker began pouring its elixir of the gods.

“Tiresome and shitty,” Dean complained, as he served her a cup. “If it was up to Zachariah, he would chain us all to our desks. And not in the fun way, either.”

“You’re going to get an ulcer,” she poked him.

“Says the girl who’s so exhausted she falls asleep at work.”

Jo grimaced and hid her face in her hands, a gesture Emma had picked up from her whenever she did something wrong and that Dean found hilarious.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “Emma had nodded off, and I figured if I just closed my eyes for two seconds…”

“Hey,” Dean softly grabbed her by the wrists and uncovered her face. “It’s okay. But you’ll get an ulcer too. You shouldn’t be working your ass off every day.”

“I like working my ass off every day,” Jo replied with a shrug. “Keeps the bad thoughts at bay.”

“What bad thoughts?” Dean asked, frowning.

Jo cringed, as if she had just realized she had talked too much or as if she had done an embarrassing joke that no one but her would understand.

“Nothing. Don’t… don’t worry about it. It was just a long weekend.”

“Did you fight with Samandriel again?” he asked. He didn’t know why his mind went there so easily. It just did. He still couldn’t forget how miserable and stressed Jo had looked over Christmas and granted, she hadn’t looked like that again, but still…

“No,” Jo said, with a sigh. “But… I get the feeling I’m going to have to, soon. And with my mom, too.”

“I don’t follow,” he said, frowning.

Jo downed the hot coffee while grimacing and when she put it down she told him what had happened over the weekend: Charlie had contacted a girl named Dorothy, who worked for a record label in LA, and she had come to see their Saturday night show. And she had been so blown away by it, she had asked them to come have dinner with them the following night.

Dean had been working in business long enough to know that a meal someone offered to pay for you wasn’t always just a meal.

“She made you an offer,” he guessed.

“A pretty damn good offer,” Jo nodded. “She was talking about royalties and concerts and… it was serious, Dean. It was actually a serious offer for us to record an album and start up our career.”

“But… that’s a good thing, right?” Dean asked, trying the tight knot his stomach had suddenly turned into. “That’s what you wanted, what you’ve been searching for. Your band is actually… you’re actually…”

The anguish in Jo’s eyes was stronger than anything he had seen before in his life.

“She wants us to move to LA.”

“Oh.”

If she had slapped him in the face, he wouldn’t have been any more eloquent than he was right then. They stared at each other for a very long time, as the heaviness of what Jo was implying settled between the two.

“You’re leaving?” he asked and it was like something broke within him. His immediate first thought was _‘You can’t leave, Emma needs you! I need you!’_ but of course that would’ve been an awfully selfish reaction. “What does your mother say?” was a much better answer, although still not exactly what Jo was looking for.

“I haven’t talked to her about this,” she admitted. “Granted, she’s… she’s been more tolerant of my choices lately. And Bobby moved here, so she won’t be alone even if I do leave. But still…”

“You don’t want to just…” Dean understood, but he was still too shocked to form coherent sentences. Jo herself had her lips tightened in a very fine line, as if she was trying with all her might not to start screaming.

“You know, it’s funny,” she commented, even though she was pretty far away from laughing. “I’ve always wanted to leave. I always imagined that one day I was going to take my car and just… go away. Take on the road by myself and never look back. But now that it could actually happen…”

“You’re terrified.”

Jo sighed deeply, like she was incredibly thankful that it was Dean who had said it instead of forcing her to confess it.

“After we left Dorothy, we talked for hours,” Jo kept telling him. That would explain why she was so tired that day. “Ash was exulting. I think he’s going to do this with or without us, he’s just… he doesn’t care. He has nothing tying him up. Charlie hates her job and I think she might have a crush on Dorothy, so if she asked her to go to freaking Oz, she would probably leave too,” she added with a giggle. “Garth was the one who was closest to understanding my panic. He turned to me and he asked _‘Well, how did you tell your mom you were dropping out of college?’_ ”

She laughed and Dean did too, because he perceived that was what she needed to calm down. But the way she was telling, it sounded a lot like she was the only one who was truly having second thoughts about the entire thing.

Would it be enough to persuade her to stay?

He mentally slapped himself the very moment that idea crossed his mind. It was a selfish, stupid thing to think. Of course Jo didn’t owe him staying for him, she had her own dreams, her own aspirations, and it was great that she had found something that she was passionate about. And she was looking at him with wide eyes, almost if she was lost and trusted him to tell her where to go. Whatever Dean said next, he had to be very careful about it.

“I think you should do whatever feels right for you. If you want to take on that road, you should do it. Just make sure to find a car that’s more resistant than that bug of yours,” he added, and Jo giggled. “I mean it, though. You shouldn’t be scared, because… even if you mess up, you can always come back home.”

And that was when Dean realized than he said home, he meant there. His house. With him and Emma. Like Jo belonged in that place as naturally as he did, like her presence in that house was so ingrained in it that it just didn’t make sense for her to come back to anywhere else.

And that was stupid. Because Jo belonged to herself. She always had.

She nodded. Her eyes glimmered like she was at the edge of tears.

“Can I give you a hug?” she requested, with a mousy little voice that sounded nothing like her own.

“Of course. Come here.”

He wrapped his arms tight around her and pulled her close. Jo hid her face in his neck and they remained there, quiet and heavy, like any other words between them would be superfluous. Dean leaned into her warmth, trying to retain that fragile moment with all his might, trying to remember what her small body felt like against his, the exact texture of her hair against his chin. Even if he still saw her after that, he wouldn’t have another chance to memorize all of those details.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do this,” she muttered. “I don’t know how I’m going to leave you and Emma.”

Dean closed his eyes and bit back a chortle. It was amazing that they could still think in the same wavelength like that.

“Well… if it makes it any easier, then… how about I fire you?” he suggested. They broke apart and he forced out a smile at her. “You still would have to come to work until you leave. And until I find a proper daycare for Emma.”

“You hate daycares,” she pointed out.

“I do,” Dean admitted. “But perhaps it’s time I overcome that, you know? Emma needs to socialize with kids her age and learn stuff. Maybe the change will be good for her.”

That wasn’t the entire true, though. The other part was that he couldn’t imagine himself trusting someone as completely as he had trusted her. He couldn’t imagine leaving Emma alone for hours every day with anyone but Jo. No one was going to be as good to them as she had been.

Jo might have read that in his eyes. She stepped back and nodded. She was ready to hear the words. Dean took a deep breath and spoke as if he didn’t have a lump on his throat.

“You’re fired, Miss Harvelle. We wish you luck in all your future endeavors. And we’ll be waiting for you tomorrow at the same hour.”

She made a gargling sound, almost as if she had tried to laugh and swallow the tears at the same time. She wiped her eyes so quickly Dean thought maybe he had imagined it.

“Thank you,” she muttered, forcing out a smile.

He still walked her to the door like every night. He was tempted to walk her directly to her car, but that might have been going too far. He contented himself with staying on the porch, not hiding that he always waited for her to leave before he went back inside, before he returned to Emma and his big empty bed.

“Dada?” a little voice called out from atop of the stairs.

Dean composed himself and looked at his daughter, standing there rubbing her eyes and dragging her octopus with her. That was one of the disadvantages of the bed. She could get up and roam the halls whenever she pleased to.

“Hey, little monster,” he said, climbing up the stairs towards her. “You couldn’t sleep?”

“Where’s Jo?” she asked.

Dean picked her up and smiled at her.

“Jo went home,” he told her. “But don’t worry. She’ll be here tomorrow.”

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t until Jo realized the million little things that were involved in moving away that she really came to appreciate what Bobby had done for them. Dorothy was helping them out in any way she could, but still, it was going to take some time before they got everything right: they had to find an apartment that was big enough for the four (but didn’t ask much in the way of rent since the label wouldn’t be paying them until they started recording the album), they had to decide what to bring with them, what they were going to leave, what things they could afford to buy once they were in Los Angeles… it was just a To Do list that seemed to gain three items every time she was able to cross one out.

But after a while, Jo was entirely too thankful to have that to think about. Because dealing with the existential anxiety of having her entire life reduced to three or four boxes that she planned to take with her was nothing compared with the fact she had to talk about her going away.

Dean had almost been a test in this aspect. He was hurt, she could tell he was hurt, but he had been so amazing and supportive… Jo didn’t know what she had done to deserve a friend as good as him. He had been the one to get them their first gig, after all, and now he had been the one to give her the courage to take the final leap. And Dean was, objectively, the person who needed her the most. Her mom and her boyfriend, well, she was sure they wanted her around, but they didn’t _need_ her. Not the way he did, anyway. And if he had been able to let her go, then… it shouldn’t be hard for the rest, should it?

Ellen stared at her wide eyed and with her mouth hanging slightly open as Jo explained to her who Dorothy was and what she wanted her to do. They were lucky to be in the bar, because the first thing her mother did was grabbing a bottle of whiskey and taking a long swig directly from it.

“Los Angeles,” she repeated after she swallowed.

“It’s a once in a lifetime chance, mom,” Jo said, trying to sound way more convinced than she actually felt. “We can’t let it slide. We don’t know when or if another will present itself…”

“You’re going to be half a country away,” Ellen said, completely disregarding her arguments.

“It’s almost a two days drive,” Jo replied. Then she lowered her eyes. She didn’t want her mother to realize she had already been looking at road maps online and planning the best way to get there. “I mean, it’s just a little further than Bobby was before…”

“Bobby is a grown ass man.”

“I’m not going to be alone,” Jo said, thinking the argument that she was also a grown ass woman wasn’t going to fly with her mother at that precise moment. “Ash, Charlie and Garth are coming with me.”

“Oh, that sure calms me down!” Ellen snapped and took another swig of whiskey.

Her tone was becoming increasingly hysterical. Jo didn’t want to fight with her, she really didn’t. But she felt her mother’s anguish brewing and she was almost completely certain she was going to explode in a screaming fit at any second now and she had to be able to handle it, she had to stay firm…

Ellen took a third swig of whiskey and breathed out very slowly.

“Okay.”

“Mom, I really think this will be good for me. This is something I want to do, I found out what I…” Jo stopped her ramble as the only word her mother had said settled inside of her brain. “Wait… okay?”

“Okay,” Ellen repeated. “I… you’re telling me, right? You’re not asking my permission. So… what can I really say?”

It was a perfectly valid question and Jo had no idea how to answer to it. She had been expecting a lot of things from her mother. This easy acceptance was definitely not one of them.

“Are you… okay?”

“Oh, yeah, totally,” Ellen said. She immediately contradicted that by taking the longest swig yet. “You know, I’m just… trying to process the fact that you’re not my little girl anymore and you’re capable of making your own choices and I shouldn’t be a hindrance on your future.”

Jo narrowed her eyes at her. That didn’t sound like her mother at all.

“Bobby gave me a book on Empty Nest Syndrome,” Ellen explained.

That made more sense.

“Well, thank God for Bobby,” she commented.

“Yeah,” Ellen agreed. “Without him, we’d be fighting and you’ll leave angry and… I don’t want that, sweetie. I want you to leave knowing that I’m going to be here and you can come back, anytime, if you need to.”

It was almost the same thing Dean had said to her. Jo smiled thinking about it. She stood up, walked around the counter and gave her mom a long tight hug.

So that was two out of three. Jo shouldn’t have expected everyone to take it so calmly, though.

“I’m sorry, come again?”

Samandriel stared at her from the other side of the table, the side of his lips rising and falling again, as if he couldn’t decide if he should laugh or not. As if a part of him thought Jo was joking with him.

“I’m moving to Los Angeles,” she repeated. “It’s… it’s a great opportunity for me.”

He kept staring at her, almost unblinking. Jo looked down at her half-eaten burger and her French fries, not because her boyfriend’s blue eyes unnerved her, but because she wanted to give him time to grasp the immensity of what was going on there.

“You can’t move to LA!” Samandriel protested, with vehemence and a volume Jo expected from her mother, but not from him. “What will happen to us?”

“Nothing has to happen to us,” Jo said. She tried to ignore the fact that several faces on the Biggerson were turning towards them. She started regretting her decision of not finding a more private space. “We can still chat, we’ll have video calls… a long distance relationship doesn’t mean a dead relationship anymore, you know.”

“But… it won’t be the same,” he argued. “You won’t be here, with me. We can’t…”

His voice trailed off. He probably saw in Jo’s face that it was better if he shut up right then.

“Why, thank you for your support, baby,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Really glad to know that I can count on you for whatever I decide to do. I’m so relieved.”

“You don’t have to be mean,” Samandriel protested. “It’s just… do you not realize what this means to me?”

“Do you not realize what this means _to me_?” Jo replied. “This is what I love to do and…”

“And it’s great, it’s great that you have a creative outlet, don’t get me wrong. But I thought that was what it was, that you were going to find an actual job eventually…”

“This is an actual job, Samandriel. If by actual job you mean that someone’s going to pay me to do it,” Jo pointed out. Her voice had become ice cold by then. “And in any case, that wasn’t what was important to me. It never was.”

“And maybe that’s the whole thing, Joanna,” he said. His face had turned from stunned to serious. He reached his hand across the table and grabbed Jo’s, but she didn’t squeeze back. “I don’t think you realize that, in this economy, you can’t wait for the perfect job you want to do to drop down from the sky. You have to work hard and be realistic.”

Jo stared at him. Those words didn’t sound like his. Perhaps it was something someone had told him to get him to stay on his lane and now he was channeling that because she had scared him and that was fair. She only thought about those things later, though, because right now, she hoped she was channeling her mother’s best death glare, because she certainly felt furious enough to do it. Samandriel let go of her hand and shrunk back into his seat. He opened his mouth to speak again, but Jo didn’t give him the chance:

“What do you think we’ve been doing all this time? What… did you think all those weekends I couldn’t go out with you, all those parties and weddings we played at, were just because we liked it? You have no idea how many hours and days we spent on a single song! Do you think it’s easy for Charlie to go up on a stage with her anxiety, for Garth to sacrifice his study time so he can practice and play with us? This opportunity didn’t drop down from the sky; it came because Charlie dared to ask Dorothy to come see us.”

“I… I know that, but…”

“Just because what we do doesn’t fit your definition of hard work, it doesn’t mean we don’t put as much effort into it as you put on your studies!”

She stopped talking because she was out of breath. Samandriel was looking at her, eyes open wide and his mouth hanging slightly open.

“Jo… people are staring…” he babbled.

Jo realized that two and she supposed she should be embarrassed by it, but as she looked at him again, she realized she didn’t care. She was just tired. Samandriel was the last in a long list of people warning her about what she should do, warning her that she had to do something to pay the bills and not because she liked it, warning her not to take a risk. Dean and Ellen had understood she was going to take it anyway and decided to support her instead of berating her, so why couldn’t Samandriel?

“I’m moving to LA,” Jo repeated, this time more forcefully, as if she wanted that message to reach him loud and clear. “It’s happening. You can be happy for me and help me find a way to make this work or…”

She didn’t finish. Samandriel was looking at her like he was about to cry, his eyes growing puffy and his jaw clenched tight. And Jo felt sorry that she was being so harsh on him. Two years hadn’t seen like that much of an age gap to her and it really wasn’t, but looking at him, she realized it had taken her two years to grow up enough to make this decision. He still had his views of the world wrapped up around what his parents had told him his entire life that he should do. He thought that would make him safe and safe would make him happy. And there was nothing wrong with that world view, at all, but she just couldn’t share it.

And she didn’t think they could continue together if their ideas of what the future held differed that radically.

“Jo?” he said, urging her to continue.

“I don’t know,” Jo sighed. “I’m sorry, Alfie.”

He breathed in and said he would think about it.

They didn’t have much to say afterwards.

Luckily for Jo, there was still much she had to do she didn’t have time to think if that meant they had broken up or not. Dorothy found them an apartment that would have enough space for Garth’s drums (they would be sleeping in rooms the size of closets, but that was expected) and it was ready for them to move in a month. That seemed like a long time, but while Jo packed things and talked to her friends and wrote more songs and made a list of the people she needed to alert that she was moving… time slipped by without her noticing. She blinked and suddenly, she only had a week left.

“When did that happen?” she asked Dean.

She barely stayed with him for their late night chats anymore because she had been so busy, but that Tuesday, she realized she had nothing to do at home. Not only that, but three days from now, it would be her last day working for him. She wouldn’t walk Emma to the park every morning. She wouldn’t buy his groceries for him. She wouldn’t enjoy a cup of tea over the kitchen isle while they talked about their lives anymore.

Dean looked at her with a smile on his face that didn’t really reach his eyes. Jo figured it was because he was so tired.

“Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans,” he commented.

“Double Fantasy? Really?”

“What’s wrong with Double Fantasy?”

“Nothing.” Jo shrugged. “Just that I think that people like it because John was killed right afterwards.”

“Bold statement,” Dean said, but his laughter died out fast and when he looked up, he seemed like he wanted to say something else, but couldn’t really bring himself to. He licked his lips and opened his lips and Jo tried to ignore the backflip her stomach did looking at him.

She was never going to tell him. That was another thing that was never happening: she was never going to tell him how she felt about him, even when she had no right to be feeling like that, even when she knew it was never going anywhere. She didn’t know why she thought it would make a difference if she said it out loud right then. She just had the feeling it would change everything.

But then Dean looked away over her shoulder and the moment passed.

“What is it, little monster? Do you need to go potty?”

Emma was standing at the kitchen’s door, clutching Raggedy the Cat close to her chest. She had been playing on the living room with him, but now she stared at the adults with wide green eyes, as if she had been silently and politely expecting them to notice her. She nodded, as if it was the most important thing in the universe right then. And maybe for her, it was. Dean walked up to her and picked her up.

“Okay, I should get going…” Jo commented.

“No,” Emma said. She stretched her little hand and grabbed onto Jo’s shoulder when she passed them by. “Jo, stay. I need to go potty.”

She said it matter-of-factly, as if it was of the utmost importance that Jo waited while she finished. And Jo understood why: Emma and Dean always stood on the porch to say goodbye to her, especially those last couple of days. Jo had to wait until they came out to do that before she left. It was a simple as that.

And the idea broke Jo’s heart all over again. What would Emma think when days passed and she didn’t return again? Would she believe Jo had abandoned her? Would she forget about her?

Of course she would. She was too little to understand why Jo needed to leave, but also to remember her once Jo stopped being a part of her life permanently.

Dean seemed to be thinking the same thing, because his façade of supportiveness fell for a second, a fraction of a second, and suddenly Jo could see clearly how sad and overwhelmed he was. But she blinked and it was gone, replaced by his usual charming smile.

“She will be here, sweetie, don’t worry about it,” he assured Emma. “It’ll take five minutes.”

“I’ll be here,” Jo promised, forcing out a smile for them. “Yeah, right here. I’ll wait.”

Emma threw her a suspicious glance over her dad’s shoulder as he carried her away to the bathroom. Jo wondered if she knew, somehow, that this was the final week Jo was going to spend with her. Or if she suspected it. Dean and Jo had talked about it with Emma around plenty of times completely certain she wasn’t going to get it, but what if she did? She was a smart girl. She could certainly be paying enough attention to them. She could have sensed something on their voices or guess the meaning of their words.

Jo shook those ideas away and looked around at the living room, feeling strangely nostalgic for a house she had never really lived in. It had been two years since she had showed up at Dean’s step and he had given her a chance despite her being horribly late and openly scared.

It seemed… it seemed a little cold to just walk away like that. There had to be a better way to say goodbye to Emma and Dean.

Dean seemed to be thinking the same thing, because when he walked out of the bathroom with Emma in tow, he fixed his eyes on her.

“So listen…”

“I was thinking…”

They both stopped and chuckled at the same time, awkwardly.

“Okay,” Dean said. “You go first.”

“I have a farewell party on Saturday,” Jo told him. “I mean, it’s not like a party… just a bunch of my friends, gathering together at my mom’s bar. We’re going to have a few drinks, maybe sing some karaoke. That kind of thing.”

“Okay,” Dean nodded.

Jo realized he wasn’t going to add a word until she explicitly up and said it out loud.

“So I was thinking maybe you’d want to come,” she said. “It’ll be fun.”

He winced and Jo knew right away he wasn’t going to do it.

“I’ll think about it,” he said, without compromising. “I don’t know what I’ll do, really. Usually you’re the person I call when I have to go somewhere on a Saturday night and can’t leave Emma alone.”

“Right,” Jo laughed, awkwardly. It was a long shot anyway. And of course, it wasn’t going to be the real farewell she was expecting, because Dean just wasn’t going to bring Emma as well…

“I’m taking the day off on Friday,” he announced.

“Oh.” Jo stared at him, completely confused. Did that mean he didn’t want her to come that day? Did that mean she had even one day less that she had thought to…?

“Yeah, so maybe we can go to the park or… to have lunch at that deli we like,” he added, awkwardly scratching the back of his head. “So we can both say goodbye to you.”

Emma hanged from his hand silently, watching at her dad and at Jo alternatively. It seemed like she was silently trying to figure out exactly what they were talking about.

“I’d love that,” Jo decided.

“Okay, it’s a date then,” Dean laughed. Then he froze and cleared his throat awkwardly. “But not like an actual date, just…”

“Yeah, Dean, I got it,” Jo chuckled.

He walked her to the door like every night. Jo tried not to think about how little times she had left of them doing that. Instead, she waved at Emma with the biggest smile she could conjure up and walked to her car, resisting the urge to look over her shoulder one last time.

 

* * *

 

Ellen and Bobby were on the table, lost in thought as they stared at the thousands of small puzzle pieces spread on the kitchen’s table. They both groaned a greeting at her while she walked in, apparently so concentrated that they didn’t even realize it was late enough for her to be home. Jo opened the fridge, took out some juice and approached the table to look over her mom’s shoulder. She grabbed a piece and neatly managed to place it right where it belonged.

“Are you kidding me? We’ve been looking for that for hours!” Ellen complained while Bobby smiled through his beard and hastily started placing other pieces right then. Not to be outdone, Ellen grabbed a handful against her chest and also started finding where they belonged as fast as she could.

“Woah, there, guys, don’t strain yourselves,” Jo joked, taking a sip from her juice.

“Sorry, girl,” Bobby muttered, analyzing a piece very carefully and narrowing his eyes at it. “Give us a sec. We’ll finish this and then we can have dinner.”

“Oh, but by the time we finish, it’ll be late,” Ellen commented, looking up from the puzzle. “You sure you want to sleep on the couch again?”

“My neck can handle it, Ellen. I’m not that old…”

“Guys, cut the crap. I know Bobby sleeps in your bedroom, mom,” Jo commented. She took another sip from her juice, trying not to burst out laughing at their faces.

“No!”

“When did you? How did you…?”

“I have eyes,” Jo said, rolling them to show it. She had seen Bobby sneaking out to go to the bathroom a couple of times and Ellen ruffling the couch’s sheets to make them look slept in. If they thought they were being subtle, they failed epically at it. “What, were you waiting for me to leave to make it official or something?”

“No,” Ellen said, sheepishly. “We just… you were so busy; we didn’t want to give you another thing to worry about.”

“Why would I worry about this?” Jo laughed. “It’s awesome. I’m happy for you two. Really.”

They kept staring at her, maybe waiting for her to say that she really didn’t mean it and how could they do that to her father’s memory or something ridiculous and entitled like that. Jo calmly kept sipping from her juice until it dawned on both of them that she was completely serious and completely accepting of the situation.

Ellen was the first to move: she stood up without saying a word and she placed her arms around Jo’s shoulders. Her daughter returned the hug, sticking her tongue out at Bobby over Ellen’s shoulder. Bobby tried to look annoyed, but he was smiling so wide he also failed at that.

“Okay, well,” Ellen said, stepping away and taking a deep breath. “Time to reheat the dinner, I guess. Take that puzzle out.”

“But it’s not finished yet,” Bobby protested.

“I don’t care, if it isn’t, we’re not eating dinner over it. We can put it together again later.”

Bobby grumbled and groaned, but he swept the pieces back into the box at the same time Ellen nagged at him not to nag anymore. Jo sat at the table and feinted putting her feet over it, only for Ellen to start nagging even more. Jo laughed at her and for a moment, for one, glorious moment, she had the feeling this was how everything was supposed to be.

And the melancholy to know that everything was going to change very soon.


	15. Chapter 15

“What do you think, green or red?”

Emma was on her bed, toying with Raggedy the Cat and Mr. Eight. Apparently, they were in some sort of epic adventure Dean had rudely interrupted, because she looked up at him with a deep frown. Dean held both the dresses up in front of her, but Emma offered no opinions as she turned her attention back to her plushies and started babbling again.

“Emma, come on,” Dean sighed. “This is… okay, I guess it’s not that important,” he admitted. “But still, I want you to look your best.”

Emma looked up at both the dresses with utter indifference. Dean figured that meant she wasn’t all that excited about those colors, so he pulled the next options for her to see: the pink and the yellow dress. The latter had been a present from Madeleine, and she had begun asking why they were no pictures of her wearing it. So perhaps this was the perfect occasion for Emma to wear it for the first time.

“What do you think?” he asked, holding it for her to see up close.

“I’m hungry,” Emma replied, tilting her head.

“It’ll be just a second. Jo won’t be here until… ah, crap,” he muttered, taking a second look at the watch on the wall. The arms in the form of fairies pointed that it was almost eight.

He had been so invested in trying to find a perfect dress for Emma to wear that he had lost the notion of time. And now he had a little over half an hour to get Emma to eat, get dressed and be ready for the park.

“Okay, fine. Let’s have breakfast.”

Emma gladly stepped down from the bed and followed him to the stairs, holding Raggedy with her all the time and apparently very pleased to have finally escaped the fashion choice dilemma. Dean placed her on her high chair and handed her the plastic spoon so she could calmly fish her cereals from the bowl.

“Listen, I need you to be on your best behavior today,” he told her, as he started the coffee maker for himself. “I want Jo to have the best possible memory of us that we can give her, okay? It’s going to be super fun, I promise.”

Emma continued putting cereal into her mouth and pensively chewing them. It was as if she was making an attempt to understand her father’s words, but they were simply too complex for her. Dean did that all the time: he talked to her like he would talk to a grown up and Emma sometimes crunched her nose or tilted her head in confusion. But it also meant she had learned to speak very well and could form complete sentences with ease. For example, now she said:

“Super fun in the park.”

And she smiled. She looked so much like Lydia when she did it that Dean couldn’t help but to have a little lump forming in his throat every single time. He messed up her hair and laughed along with her whiles she put another spoonful of cereals in her mouth.

After she was satisfied, she was way more receptive to the prospect of choosing a dress (the light blue one) and letting Dean put it on her.

“Hands up! Very well! Look how tall you’re getting,” he commented, as he placed a hair clip with a bow on the right side of her head to keep her locks from falling on her face. Perhaps it was time to give her a haircut after all.

Emma smiled coquettishly at him and went to the bed to pick Raggedy the Cat once more. It was strange how attached she had become to that toy, but it was appropriate. When the doorbell rang, Emma shouted: “Jo!” and barely gave Dean time to run behind her and stop her from jumping down the stairs.

Jo stood on the porch, the same smile as always and her eyes lightning up when Emma ran up to her and threw her arms around her legs.

“Hi, Emma, good morning!” Jo laughed, picking her up. “You ready? We’re having a special day today!”

“Let me get my keys and we can get on our way,” Dean said.

Jo crooked an eyebrow at him. “Really? You’re going out like that?”

Dean was going to ask what was wrong with his outfit when he realized he hadn’t got dressed for work that day. In fact, he hadn’t got dressed at all. He was still donning his pajama pants and the grey shirt with years-old vomit stains that he wore to sleep. He hoped he wasn’t blushing, but judging by the fact his face was suddenly on fire, he didn’t think he had that luck.

“Let me just… I’ll go get…”

“Go,” Jo replied, chuckling and holding onto Emma.

Dean flew upstairs. He didn’t remember making that much of a fool of himself in front of a girl since his college years. Well, it wasn’t like Jo was a girl. Meaning, she was a girl, but he didn’t think of her as a girl. And it was better he got dressed already instead of thinking a bunch of stupid thoughts he probably shouldn’t be having anyway.

His jeans bit a little into his stomach and he had to add a black t-shirt underneath his flannel. Once again, he made the resolution of going to the gym (at some point, after the consequences of losing Jo blew over) and came out of the room ready to not even address the fact Jo had seen him in his pajamas.

“… I don’t know how long I’m going to be away,” Jo was saying when he stopped atop of the stairs. “But I’m going to miss and your dad, very much. You are both very important to me, and I don’t want you to believe otherwise, okay, Emma?”

They were sitting on the couch and Emma was looking up at her with eyes wide open.

“I need you to be a good girl for your daddy,” Jo continued, grabbing both Emma’s hand. “Are you going to be a good girl, Emma?”

That question she understood.

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Jo sighed. “Gimme a hug, come here.”

Emma threw her little arms around Jo’s neck and sank her face on her shoulder. She still looked a bit confused, but she smiled when she saw Dean.

“Hi, Dada,” she said.

“Hey, little monster,” Dean replied. He grabbed his keys and slid them inside of his pocket. “All set. Let’s go now.”

It was a beautiful spring day. They walked down the street, each holding one of Emma's hands and lifting her up at the same time whenever they reached a part of the sidewalk that was cracked. Emma laughed out loud and took to dragging her feet to point out when she wanted to be lifted again. They crossed paths with Sid from Across the Street (Dean really had never got around finding his actual surname), who was coming home from his morning jog (when did that man work, Dean had no idea) and with Mrs. Carrigan, struggling with her grocery bags.

"Ah, thank you, you're such a sweetheart," she commented when Dean left Emma and Jo momentarily to help her put them on her trunk. "How are you, darling?" she asked Jo.

"I'm very well and I hope you're too," she answered, trying to conceal the fact Emma was struggling to hide behind her at the sight if the old woman and her terrifying prosthetic teeth. "How's Mr. Carrigan?"

"Oh, he keeps complaining about his back. You know how men are," she added with a wink. "Don't let yours go out of shape, huh?"

She poked Dean on the side. Instead of correcting her (for perhaps the third time) and telling her Jo wasn't really Emma's mom or Dean's wife, Dean laughed out loud.

"Well, what can I tell you? The cakes you bring to the potluck are just hard to resist."

Mrs. Carrigan continued her way with an enchanted smile, after promising Dean she would bake another one just for him.

"Dean! I thought you'd be at work," Lisa Braeden called when they walked past her garden. As usual, she had her gloves and her pruning scissors with her. Her dahlias were growing magnificently that year, and Jo's heart felt a little tug at the thought that she wasn't going to be there on the summer to watch them in full bloom.

"I decided to take a mental health day," Dean explained with a little shrug.

Lisa nodded. She knew what this was about, of course. Jo always stopped to talk to her on her way to the park with Emma, so she was bound to have mentioned she was moving. And even if she hadn't, Dean had asked her for a favor that she couldn't interpret as anything other than him losing his babysitter.

"I texted you Amy's number, did you get it?" she asked.

"Yes, thank you. I've talked to her. She seems very nice."

"She is," Lisa assured him. "Well, it was good to see you. And you," she added with a nod towards Jo. "Bye, Emma!"

"Bah-bah!" Emma replied with her usual wave of hand.

"Who's Amy?" Jo asked as they got on their way again. She was smiling, but Dean thought she saw a little wince as the question came out of her mouth. Perhaps she was expecting to hear that Amy was going to be her replacement. Dean decided not to tell her that to him, she was irreplaceable.

"She's Ben's old daycare teacher," Dean explained. "Lisa recommended it and I talked to her so I can drop Emma a little early on Monday and I can check out the place."

"Really?" Jo asked.

"Yep. So you see; you don't have to worry about anything. We're going to be just fine."

He meant it to console her, to show her that she could leave with absolute ease and not have to think about them. But Jo's eyes grew somber for a moment and Dean didn't think that he'd got the effect he was going for. He opened his mouth to say something else, but they turned around the corner and got to the park.

“Hey, look, Emma, the swings are free!” Jo pointed out. “Do you want to go?”

The way Emma’s eyes light up was more eloquent than any spoken answer. They ran towards them, laughing and screaming the way only little kids and girls who loved encouraging little kids could. Emma stretched her hands so Jo could put her up on the swing and shrieked with joy when her babysitter started pushing her.

“High!” she demanded, extending her hands up in the air. “High, Jo, high!”

Jo pushed her and then stepped forwards, ready to catch the swing in her hands if it went too fast or too far away. Dean was slightly aware that he was smiling like an idiot while watching them, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He took out his phone and managed to snap a couple pictures before Jo caught what he was doing out of the corner of her eye.

“You come push her!”

“Really? You’re doing it remarkably,” he said.

Of course, Jo wasn’t going to be fooled by fake humbleness. She knew he wanted to push Emma. She snatched the phone away from him and took several pictures, if the clicks that followed were anything to go by. Emma was delighted, waving her hands and legs as if she was attempting to take fly, demanding to go higher and screaming out of pure delight at the top of her lungs. Dean didn’t know how long it took for her to get tired of the game, but Jo and him had to change at least three times before she did.

Then it was time to feed the birdies. They bought bed crumbs from the kind lady at the stand (“Hi, Jo. Hello, Emma,” she greeted them with a smile. “Nice to see Daddy finally got to join you.”) and found a small bench underneath some trees. Jo mentioned later that this was the same bench she had sat down on the first time she’d brought Emma to the park, over two years before.

“You were so nervous. You basically asked me to check in with you every hour in the hour,” she remembered with a laugh.

“Well, you didn’t help. You made a joke about current newspapers and kidnapped people,” he reminded her. Jo stuck her tongue out at him and shrugged, as if to say she was guilty as charged but she didn’t think she had done anything wrong.

“Time flies, huh?” she commented.

“Like pigeons,” Dean replied.

Emma was standing a few steps away from them, throwing crumbs at the pigeons that had flocked around her. She giggled whenever one of them leaned to eat one and cooed, demanding more. Dean took another picture of her. And then, maybe because she was distracted and looking pretty in her smile and hoodie, Dean moved the phone and snapped a picture of Jo looking at Emma. He forgot to silence the shutter.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing!” he lied.

“Oh, two can play this game, Dean Winchester,” she said, extracting her own phone from her pocket. Dean did everything in his power to ruin her photographs, from covering his face with his hand to making silly expressions, but Jo was not going to give up so easily.

“Ah, come on, I want to have something to remember you by,” she insisted. “Let me take a picture, you ridiculously handsome man!”

“Okay, okay, hold on,” Dean said between chuckles.

It wasn’t like he was camera shy or anything. He just didn’t think it was going to be that important for Jo to remember him. He hadn’t been at home all that much while she was there, after all. But she had invested a lot of time into Emma, and that was what was really important. The flock of pigeons flew away in one impressive gust of wind. Emma stretched her hands towards them, trying to catch them, but she forgot about them when Dean picked her up and spun her around a couple of times. When he thought she was sufficiently ruffled, he put her down, brushed the hair from her face and squatted next to her.

“Emma, look at the camera,” she said. “Look at it, come on!”

Emma did as she was told and waved back at Jo. So did Dean. When Jo showed her the picture, it actually looked pretty well. Dean wasn’t a fan of how he looked in pictures sometimes, but Emma was insanely cute in it.

“Can you send it to me? I don’t have many pictures of us together,” he explained.

“That’s because you refuse to get a selfie stick so you can take your pictures with her yourself,” Jo poked him, but she did send it.

Dean wondered if it would be too much to ask for them to pose together and get someone to take the picture of the three of them. Then he decided it would be. This wasn’t about him and Jo, it never had been. It was about giving Emma a wonderful last day with one of her favorite persons.

They had lunch at the deli and laughed out loud when the new waitress congratulated them on their beautiful daughter. Dean allowed himself to have a burger (“I’m starting the diet on Monday, I swear”) and Jo stole French fries from his plate in exchange for him having a taste of her weird oriental ice tea. Emma painted the little drawings on the children’s menu and then gave it to Jo. She had mostly kept inside the lines. Well, maybe fifty percent inside of the lines. Well, forty. Dean was allowed to be partial and Jo was too, because she smiled at Emma wide.

“Thank you,” she told her. “I’m going to keep it forever.”

She only seemed to be half-joking.

They managed to keep the sadness at bay until they ordered an individual piece of cheesecake for dessert. They tried to keep chatting, Jo telling him about Bobby and Ellen finally getting together and Dean telling her about the people at his office, but the reality that their “date” was almost over started to set in even before they had taken the last bite (Emma got it).

“So, big adventure in the big city,” he commented. “You’re going to be careful out there, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am,” Jo said. “And if I’m not, you can rest assure Charlie’s going to let me know I’m being reckless and stupid.”

“You’re not stupid,” Dean replied. “You’re not reckless either. You’re patient and kind and… trust me, if you were even a little bit reckless, I would have fired you on the second day,” he completed, because he knew that if he kept talking he was going to say something he could never take back.

Jo glanced at him, almost as if she was struggling with words herself, but before she could pronounce them, they were interrupted by the waitress.

“Would that be all?” she asked, with a wide smile.

Dean wanted to tell her to wait another five minutes. To come back when he was ready, when he had told Jo over and over again how invaluable her help had been and how much of a mark she had left on both him and Emma. He wanted to delay the moment they would walk down the street and she would go away and he’d be alone with his daughter as much as he could. But he was just being selfish again.

The walk home was a lot quieter. Emma ran ahead of them and came back when they called her, but she got tired pretty soon and demanded to be picked up. Jo did it without a second thought and kept her up the entire way, holding her with one arm and leaving the other dangling by her side. Dean was so close to her their shoulders almost brushed and he found himself looking down at her hand, wondering if he should hold it. They would definitely look like a family if he did.

But of course, that was just another of his ridiculous ideas. He forced it down to the back of his mind where it belonged as they reached his street. Jo stopped, with Emma still in her hands and turned around to face him. And for the first time since Dean had met her, she looked sad beyond words. She had seen her worried and angry and anguishing before, but she always joked or smiled or talked with a little high pitch when that happened. She never really looked this… grief-stricken. She never looked like she was about to cry.

They stayed at the edge of his long for a very long time. Jo ran her fingers through the Emma’s hair and gently placed her lips on her temple. Then, slowly, she stretched her arms towards Dean so he could pick her up.

“I’m going to miss you,” she said. “Both of you. Very much.”

If Dean felt like something sharp and cold had just gone through his heart, he did his best to keep it hidden. At least, he hoped he did.

“And we’re going to miss you, too,” he replied, holding onto Emma very tight.

Emma turned her head from one to the other, as if she was wondering what kind of new game was this. Jo took a deep breath and stepped towards her car.

“Don’t you want to come in?” Dean said, speaking too fast for his thoughts to catch up. “You know, so you can have some coffee or tea… before you go.”

Jo flashed him a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. Her lips were trembling.

“No,” she said, with a broken voice. “But thank you. I had a great last day.”

She still couldn’t will her feet to move towards the car. It felt a little like they still had something to say and this was the moment. But if she said something right then, Dean realized, then everything would change. And he didn’t need it to change. This was right. This was how it had to happen. She had to go away, she had to find her way.

And he had to find it in him to offer something besides a broken heart and a grieving mind. So before she spoke again, he extended her his hand.

“Have a great life, Jo Harvelle,” he said in a broken whisper.

Jo took a deep breath and the tears at the edge of her eyes remained unshed.

“You too,” she answered.

Her shake was firm and confident. She was so different from the girl that had showed up at his porch with a deer in the headlights look it was hard to believe. Her shoulders looked firmer when she turned around. Her steps were longer. As if she knew exactly where she was going this time.

Dean couldn’t resist calling her name one last time before she climbed into her car.

“If you’re ever in town, give me a call,” he told her. “We can go out for ice cream or something. And I’m sure Emma will want to hear all about your adventures.”

He didn’t know why he said that. Maybe because that way, it seemed a little less final. Perhaps because if he said goodbye a thousand times more, she wouldn’t go away after all.

But of course she was going to. And when she smiled wide at him, he knew it right away.

“Will do,” she promised. She didn’t add anything else as she closed the door to her car.

Dean breathed in deeply and then put on a happy face for Emma. She didn’t have to know it was the last time she saw Jo.

“Say bye, bye, Emma.”

“Bah-bah!” Emma repeated, waving her little hand.

If Jo waved back at her, Dean never knew. Her car was already turning around the corner.

 

* * *

 

After leaving Dean and Emma, Jo resisted the urge to spend the rest of the day crying. Barely, but she did, and she figured she deserve some chocolate for that. But there was no time: she still had a few things to put away and people to call and so many things to think about that by the time Saturday night rolled around, she still had the lump caught in her throat because she hadn’t allowed herself five minutes to sit down and cry.

“You’re doing the same thing your mother does,” Bobby scolded her. “You’re doing things for the sake of doing them. You’re trying to not even think about it.”

“I’m fine,” Jo insisted.

Truth was she was so far away from fine that it was a miracle in and on itself that she hadn’t exploded yet. The emotional turmoil of losing her boyfriend, of saying goodbye to Dean and Emma, the frantic calls from Charlie wondering if they needed to take a shower curtain (Ash said they didn’t need one, but Jo and Garth were firmly in favor of one) just hadn’t let up and she had to push through it the best way she could. And the best way she could was, apparently, standing in the living room in the middle of all of her boxes, forgetting completely what she was supposed to be looking for right at that instant. She needed to remember, because the guests to the goodbye party were going to be there in less than half an hour and…

It took about five seconds for Bobby to call her out on her bullshit.

“Girl, sit down,” he said, pointing at the spot besides him in the couch with his bottle of beer. “Now.”

Jo didn’t really find a reason to refuse. Perhaps if she did, she could gather her scrambled thoughts and figure out what she was forgetting.

“You’re scared,” he told her. “It’s okay to be scared. You’re going to a big, new place and you don’t know if it’s going to work. You shouldn’t be ashamed of it, because if you go ahead with it even though you are scared, it means you really want it.”

He took a swig of his beer, apparently very pleased with himself from having imparted that bit of wisdom onto her. Jo looked at him and admitted, reluctantly, that he was right.

“That’s not the problem.”

“Then, what is?” Bobby asked, with more patience than Jo believed she deserved.

She looked to the left. She could see her mom in the kitchen, serving the snacks she had volunteered to prepare in small bowls and plates. She was busy and humming to herself. Jo could almost have sworn it was “Hello, Goodbye”, but there was no way to be sure.

“I don’t want her to see I’m scared,” Jo confessed. “Because then she will freak out and start worrying about me.”

“She’s always going to worry about you. That’s her job,” Bobby pointed out. “Listen: let me handle her, okay? All you have to worry about now is your party. Say your goodbyes, say the things you won’t be able to say any other time and just… move forwards.”

It was funny that he said that, because Jo definitely felt like she had neglected to say some things. To Dean, specifically. Like how she had grown fond of his stripped shirts and suspenders over time. Or how she always noticed the way little crinkles appeared around his eyes when he laughed. And how she liked his freckles and the way his big hands felt warm while he held hers and how much she wanted to hug him every time, all the time, because she felt safe against his broad chest. How he sang and danced along with them and didn’t feel embarrassed until he realized what he was doing and then looked down at his shoes while he blushed.

She hadn’t said any of those things, because it wasn’t her place to say them. And even though she knew she could never say them, they still sat uneasy on her chest.

It would be that way forever, she figured. She would just have to learn to live with that weight.

Before she could go too far into her self-pity party, her cellphone’s screen lit up with a message from Charlie telling her she was downstairs. So the actual party began.

More people than she expected showed up and went on to sit or stand around awkwardly with the ones they                                                                          had come with and Jo couldn’t blame them. It was a pretty diverse group of people they had there. There was the band, of course, but there were also their friends from their respective colleges and some shady characters she had seen at Ash’s house who only sat by the counter and drank beer and offer people joints (Jo was glad her mom and Bobby had decided to retreat upstairs after the first few guests arrived), a couple of Garth’s cousins and a girl from his church who looked very uncomfortable to be at a place where alcohol and drugs flowed freely, and three women in suits and a girl in a sunflower dress that were apparently all dating each other who had met Charlie at a Pride event some years before.

“We just wanted to send off our Red,” one of them, Rachel, said. “Don’t get distracted by the pretty California girls, will you?”

“I’ll make sure she doesn’t,” Dorothy intervened. Charlie stared at her wide-eyed and Dorothy grinned at her. “Because I’ll have you working on your music so hard.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah, that,” Charlie muttered.

Jo knew her enough to notice how disappointed she was. They would have to deal with that eventually, she guessed. Usually it was Charlie who would be asking questions about everything that could go wrong: what if they did hook up and then broke up? How would that affect their working relationship with Dorothy? What would happen to them if…?

Jo didn’t ask those questions. She turned on the karaoke machine they had rented and asked who wanted to sing with her. Anna and Cassie both jumped on the chance to make a very poor rendition of “Man I Feel like a Woman” with her and then Ash dazzled everybody with his interpretation of “It’s My Life”. It was immortalized on video thanks to Charlie for posterity, so they could look at it and laugh to their hearts content.

There was no better way to break the ice, though. A minute later, all the groups had mixed and they felt compelled to put a bunch of tables together so they could all sit and pass around the beer. Charlie’s lesbian friends asked Anna and Cassie if they were dating and tried to cajole them into writing for their activist newspaper, Garth’s cousin started a friendly conversation about teeth and the best way to pull them with Dorothy, who seemed oddly fascinated with the topic, and the girl from Garth’s church sat with Ash and his stoner buddies for reasons Jo couldn’t understand, too busy serving alcohol and snacks. She did catch some of their conversation, though.

“But what if like, I’m not sure if he likes me or not?” she was telling them. She was a blonde and looked very petite girl in her white dress and beige cardigan. “What if I think he likes me but I don’t know if he truly does…?”

“You just gotta be brave and tell him, Bess,” one of them told her. He had a mullet even longer than Ash’s and he looked he had rode in in the biggest Harley in existence with his leather pants and his red bandana. “It’s all about the game and how you play it, that’s what I always say.”

“That’s from Motorhead,” another of his friends accused them and they all roared with laughter.

“Do you have any actual music in that thing?” another one, also dressed up in too much leather for just one man, asked.

Not a minute later, that rowdy group of guys and Bess were passionately singing “Walk This Way” in the karaoke. On the highest note of the first chorus, she shrugged off her cardigan and unleashed her short hair at the same time she threw her head back to accept all the cheering and applause that garnered her. It was amazing.

Jo was standing right besides Garth and whistling at her when Ash touched her shoulder.

“Hey, look who came.”

Jo’s heart skipped a beat as stupid, intruding thoughts ran through her mind. She had invited him, after all. Maybe he had found someone to take care of Emma. Maybe they could say goodbye one last time and…

Samandriel had walked into the bar. He had his hands in his pockets and he was looking around as if he was a little lost. Of course. Jo took a long swig from her beer before leaving it in Ash’s hand (she knew it would be empty by the time she came back to look for it) and walked towards her boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. She wasn’t entirely sure and by the scared look Samandriel shot her, he obviously wasn’t either. She smiled at him to defuse the tension.

“Hi, Alfie.”

“Hi,” he replied, scratching the back of his neck. “You sent me a Facebook invitation…”

“Yeah, I didn’t think you would come,” Jo confessed.

Samandriel nodded, as if Jo was in her perfect right to have thought so. He opened his mouth to add something else, but a clamor of cheers and screams drowned him out. Bess had pulled Garth on the “stage” with her and they were furiously making out in front of everybody.

“Did I come at a bad time?” Samandriel asked.

Jo shook her head, grabbed his hand and pulled him outside of the bar. The night was still a little cold, as if the winter didn’t want to leave just yet, but not so much that they would need to stand close or for him to offer her a jacket. They still stood close and he still starting taking off his jacket before Jo interrupted him.

“Why are you here?” she asked. She didn’t mean to sound so aggressive, but she couldn’t help the question. The last time they had spoken hadn’t been exactly the friendliest of conversations.

“Well… I just didn’t want it to end like that,” he said, staring at his shoes. “I mean, who knows when I’m going to see you again and… this isn’t the kind of thing you want to discuss on the phone or by Skype.”

He let out a forced chuckle. Jo blinked at him, trying to process what he was insinuating.

“You think we should try it despite everything?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, a little bit too fast, as if he needed to rush the word out there before he could regret it. “Why, you don’t?”

There was a pleading look in his eyes. And just like that, Jo knew what her answer should be.

“No,” she whispered, as if that would soften the blow. “I’m sorry, Alfie. You… you deserve someone who wants the same things you do, you know?”

_You deserve someone who wants you_ , she added internally. _Not someone who was just bidding her time. Not someone who expected someone else to walk through that door_.

He took it a lot better than she expected. Then again, she had come to expect very little of poor Samandriel. He definitely could do better than her.

“I get that,” he said, with a sad smile. He looked almost relieved. As if he hadn’t really wanted to go talk to Jo that night, but he had because he felt he had to and now he was glad it was over. “Well, I guess that’s it, then…”

“No reason we can’t be friends, you know?” Jo offered. “And no reason you can’t come in and have a beer. You know, so we can go out on a high note.”

He hesitated. It was almost like he wanted to say no, say his goodbyes and leave it at that. If he did that, Jo had no doubts she wouldn’t see him again. And that’d be a shame, because she did appreciate him. Maybe less than she should, but still.

At the last second, however, he smiled and straightened his shoulders.

“Okay, but I’m not singing.”

“Oh, you’re singing,” Jo said, laughing as she pushed the door open for him. “Everybody’s singing. Sorry. I don’t make the rules.”

“It’s your party. Of course you make the rules!”

They were laughing again while they walked in, all the confusing feelings and tensions left behind in the night as they stepped into the cheerful ambient inside of the bar. The song sounding now was “Twist and Shout”, courtesy of Dorothy herself, and someone had moved the tables aside so they could all dance. Jo grabbed Samandriel’s hand and dragged him to the improvised dance floor before he could protest. After all, it had been nice while it lasted.

 

* * *

 

“And don’t forget to call me when you stop to spend the night,” Ellen instructed her.

“Yes, mom.”

“And drink lots of water and stop to eat. I don’t want you having any of those snacks that are nothing but chemicals.”

“Yes, Mrs. Harvelle.”

“And take turns to drive every two hours,” Ellen continued badgering them as they placed the last boxes on the back of the van. “And don’t go over the speed limit, ‘cause I’m not travelling three states to bail you out if you get caught…”

“You got it, Ellen,” Ash said. “We’re going to be on our best behavior, I pinky swear.”

Ellen glared at Ash as if she thought he was mocking her.

“Mom,” Jo said, standing between the two before Ellen could bark another recommendation. “We got this. We’re going to be fine.”

Ellen didn’t seem reassured. She put her hands on Jo’s cheeks and made her look at her.

“Listen to me,” she muttered. “If somebody offers you drugs…”

“Mom. Seriously.”

“It could happen!” Ellen insisted. “I want you to promise me that you’re not going to do any drugs.”

“Does weed count?”

“Joanna Beth, I swear…”

“Fine, I’m not going to do drugs, mom,” Jo said, grabbing her mother’s hands and squeezing them a little. “I’ll also exercise and have three meals a day. I’ll sleep seven hours at night and I won’t listen to music too loud on my headphones.”

“You’re lying,” Ellen accused her.

“Is it helping?”

“Yes.”

Before Jo could make another joke, Ellen wrapped her arms around her and pulled her in for a hug so tight it knocked the air out of Jo’s lungs. They were almost the same height, she realized as she hugged Ellen back. That was so strange. She always had the idea that her mother was taller than her, but now she noticed how short Ellen actually was. Or maybe Jo just felt a little taller than usual.

“I’m going to be fine, mom,” she promised.

“I know that, sweetie. I know.”

Jo looked away out of simple respect. Ellen Harvelle had only let her daughter see her cry once in her life and Jo didn’t think they were ready to see her break that tradition. She hugged Bobby as well and he patted her in the back a little bit.

“Take care of yourself, kid.”

“You too, old geezer,” she joked.

And then there was nothing left to say. Her friends had already climbed in the van. Ash had the motor running. The road waited for them.

Jo squeezed herself between Charlie and the van’s door. When the wheels started turning underneath them, there was a solemn silence between them, as if they weren’t exactly sure what to say. Even Ash seemed a little startled. After a while, though, Garth breathed out and exclaimed:

“Well… California, here we go!”

They laughed, a little forcefully at first, but louder and louder as the van gained velocity, so loud that their stomachs started hurting and they could blame the tears on their cheeks onto how hard they were laughing. None of them commented on the fact that they kept their eyes on the rearview mirror until the town disappeared behind them.


	16. Chapter 16

Two years didn’t seem like a long time, but the changes that happened in that time were so many and one behind the other that looking back on them, Dean had the feeling it had to have been a lot longer than that.

He still remembered the first time he had taken Emma to the daycare. He had been a nervous wreck, his head running scenarios of all the things that could go wrong. She could start crying the minute he walked out the door. She could get in a fight with some of the other kids if they tried to touch her crayons. She could choke on a Lego piece if the teachers were looking the other way. He was about to call in sick to work and stay home with Emma, but at the last second, he realized he couldn’t do that. Emma was no longer a little baby and Jo wasn’t there to help him. He needed to do this for the both of them.

It didn’t mean he had to like it. His face must have reflected his feelings on this, because the group of parents that was congregated at the daycare’s lobby moved aside for him and Emma when they stepped inside it. At least the place seemed clean. The walls were painted of a calming blue, with clouds and rainbows and birds all around. He saw some of the mothers (they were mostly mothers, why were they always mothers?) casting curious glances in his direction, but most of them were busy kneeling in front of their children or trying to fix their hairs to come talk to him.

The only person who approached him was a blonde woman with a round face in a blue skirt and a white shirt. She smiled at him and extended her hand.

“Mr. Winchester? Hello, I’m Amy Pond. We talked on the phone.”

“Yes,” Dean said. He fumbled with Emma’s bag and his daughter for a few seconds before he managed to extend his hand towards her. “Hello, nice to meet you.”

Amy immediately looked down at Emma, who was half-hiding behind Dean’s leg and clutching Raggedy the Cat tight against her chest.

“And you must be Emma,” Amy said, squatting to get on the girl’s level. “How are you doing?”

Emma frowned at her, as if she was wondering who this woman was and why she was talking to her.

“She’s not very good with strangers,” Dean explained.

“That’s okay. I hope we won’t be strangers for too long,” Amy said, smiling at Emma. She stood back up to look at Dean. “Now, if there’s anything else I should know…”

“Actually, there is…” Dean started, moving the bag up to start numbering all the things Emma needed.

“That you haven’t already told me on the phone or wrote down on the forms, Mr. Winchester.”

Dean tried to come up with something – anything – to prolong the inevitable moment in which he would be asked to leave. Some other young girls, all wearing the same blue skirt and white shirt uniform were showing up around and Dean deduced they were the other members of the daycare team. Some of the kids spotted them too and greeted them out loud, running at them or waving their hands, clearly excited to see them. He squeezed Emma’s hand, but she had moved in front of him and was watching curiously as her soon to be classmates babbled on excitedly or formed circles around the teachers.

“I… can’t think of anything,” he admitted grumpily in the end.

“Alright then,” Amy Pond replied, stretching her hand.

Dean reluctantly gave her the bag and waited until she hanged it from her shoulders to look down at Emma. She showed no signs of being upset or scared. In fact, she was looking at the other kids like she was trying to figure out what they were doing. It suddenly occurred to him she hadn’t had that much interaction with other kids her age, except perhaps for the few ones she encountered on the park. Maybe this was a good thing for her. But what if…?

“Hey, Emma,” Amy called her. “Do you want to play with the others?”

Emma looked up Dean, as she was waiting a sign from him. Dean forced out a smile, as if to assure her it was okay, so Emma looked at Amy again and gave her a curt, serious nod.

“Alright, then, let’s go!” Amy encouraged her.

Dean realized this was truly the moment of truth. Slowly, he made himself loosen his grip on his daughter’s hand until she was finally free. Emma took a few, unsure steps towards the other kids. One girl about her age with pig tails turned towards her and raised her doll for her to see. As if she was responding to some sort of secret code, Emma raised Raggedy in response.

“Don’t worry about a thing, Mr. Winchester,” Amy told him. “Emma’s in good hands.”

Dean still stood around the lobby while the teachers separated the kids by age and started herding them towards their rooms. Nobody told him to go away and he knew he was most likely going to be late for work, but he was so certain he was going to hear Emma’s piercing cry at any second now that he couldn’t will his feet to head for the door.

“First day?” a chubby woman asked him.

“Yes,” he admitted.

“It’s always the hardest,” she said, nodding in solidarity.

She was wrong: the hardest day was definitely the second one, when Emma figured out what this whole daycare thing was about.

“She got a little scared after you left, but she calmed down,” Amy informed him when he came back to pick her up later that Monday.

“What do you mean scared?” Dean asked, frowning at her.

“Well…” she muttered, but offered no more insight. “Do you need some advice on how to deal with a temper tantrum?”

“Emma doesn’t throw tantrums.”

Of all the words he’d had to swallow during his entire life, those had to be the bitterest ones. The following day, Tuesday, he came back to the daycare with Emma in tow and the same ritual repeated itself: he passed the bag to Amy and waited until Emma took a few steps into the room. He turned around to leave and that was when he heard it:

“Dada!”

Emma had never screamed louder or at such a high pitch. He knew he should have left then, that it wouldn’t do any good for her if he stayed, but his daughter’s voice rooted his feet to their spot and compelled him to look back. Amy was standing with a hand on Emma’s shoulder and a kind smile.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Win…”

Emma let out another ear-splitting shriek and ran towards Dean, hanging onto his leg with so much force he swore he could feel her little nails sinking into his skin.

“No!” she shouted. “Stay! Dada, stay!”

And there was that. Dean texted his secretary to tell everybody he was going to be late and spent the next thirty minutes kneeling in front of Emma with Amy, trying to console her. He never knew she had that much energy just for crying.

“Emma, you’re going to be playing with all the friends you made yesterday!” Amy tried to reason with her.

“It’s only for a few hours, baby girl. I promise I’ll come back…”

Emma just kept sobbing and shaking her head, refusing to accept any explanation or bribery.

“Jo!” she demanded. “I wanna Jo! Where’s Jo?”

Dean felt something like a punch straight to his heart and he head to contain the impulse of grabbing her and running back home. Logically, he knew that was a bad idea. It would only send the message that Emma could cry her way out of things whenever she pleased, but on the other hand it was so hard to just… leave her there.

“Oh, I’m sorry sweetie,” Amy said, holding a paper tissue to Emma’s nose so she could blow it. “Is Jo your friend?”

Emma let out a couple of shaky breaths and nodded.

“Jo is… she’s away, having an adventure,” Dean said, trying to sound as calm as he could. “That’s why she can’t come take care of you.”

Emma wrinkled her nose as if she was about to start crying again. Of course she didn’t understand that. She only understood her friend wasn’t there and she was with these new people she still hadn’t got used to and she didn’t want her dad to leave. She was rightfully overwhelmed and Dean wasn’t sure there was anything he or Amy could say to change that.

“But hey, Emma, we’re here,” Amy said. She opened the bag and took out Raggedy the Cat to offer it to her. “And your friends are here. We’re going to have fun, I promise. It’s all going to be okay.”

Emma clearly didn’t believe her, because she turned her tear-soaked face to Dean, eyes wide and begging.

“I promise you I’ll come back to pick you up right after work,” Dean told her. “Okay?”

He didn’t know if Emma believed it or if she was simply too tired to keep on shouting. But in any case, she clutched Raggedy very close to her chest and after a few more minutes of gentle coaxing and promises that it would only be for a few hours, she let Amy carry her away. Dean stayed on the daycare’s door, smiling at Emma to reassure her everything was going to be just fine until she disappeared inside the classroom.

He had to admit, Amy handled it pretty well. That time, and all the other times after that whenever Emma felt like if she put up a fight this time she might get what she wanted: to go home, to get her dad to stay or to get Jo to magically come back. Every single time Dean wanted to give in and either take her home to the office with him or shut himself up in the house with her like he had in the months after Lydia’s passing. He could do neither, so all he did was waiting in desperation until Emma resigned herself to her fate.

But he couldn’t deny that the effect on Emma was visible: she started speaking and smiling more, she became even better at coloring inside of the lines and piling blocks. The potty training also started got better, perhaps because she saw that the other kids progressively stopped wearing diapers and decided to do the same thing. Whatever the reason, the daycare ended up being a good idea, though Dean would have about done anything before admitting it out loud.

He too missed Jo. He thought about her a lot, more than it was probably appropriate to think about someone that had worked with him (or, _for_ him). He frequently found himself staring at her picture in his contacts’ list, wondering if he should just call her up or maybe send her a text asking her how she was doing, tell her about what Emma had done that day and just… keep in touch with her. Talk to her like he used to every night. Tell her it was a little lonely after work because she wasn’t there anymore.

But he always ended up putting the phone aside. Jo was probably busy with her new job, having epic adventures with her friends and living her life. He had no right to butt into that, so he refrained.

He did talk a lot with the daycare moms. They had a Facebook group where they shared tips and organized daycare events and parties. Dean was a bit nervous when he took Emma to her first birthday party when one of the other kids turned four, but luckily for him, Todd’s mom had designated a special place for adults to have coffee and watch over the kids while they played in the yard. He was the only dad there.

“Oh, that’s so sad. I’m sorry!” one of the mothers exclaimed when Dean explained to her that Emma’s mom had passed.

“It’s so brave of you to take care of Emma like you do,” one of the others said.

“Why would it? Emma’s my daughter,” Dean said, frowning.

“Well, you know,” the mom said, shifting in her seat, uncomfortable. “It’s just that you’re all by yourself. It couldn’t have been easy, especially when she was littler.”

“It wasn’t,” Dean admitted. “But I wasn’t by myself, I had a lot of help from my family and… Lydia’s family,” he completed.

He didn’t know why he didn’t mention Jo in front of the other moms. Maybe because she was someone who was so close to him, and yet not enough. It was… it was complicated, so he didn’t.

The consequence of telling them that he was a widower, though, was that the moms heard: “I am completely helpless, please come to my aid”. They started being almost aggressively nice, inviting him and Emma over for playdates and insisting he took food they had made that “was just too much for us, please, we insist, you wouldn’t want it to go to waste, would you?”. And it wasn’t exactly like Dean could say no when they did it out of the goodness of their heart. But goddammit, he had been able to take care of himself and his daughter for over three years now; he could very well continue to do it without their help.

“Oh, honey, they’re not doing it because they pity you.” Jess laughed out loud when Dean told her about it. They had invited him to their new apartment for dinner and they were having dessert already. “They’re doing it because you’re a single dad and you’re handsome.”

Sam looked up at her with a crooked eyebrow. He was having a fake tea party with Emma and Raggedy the Cat on the carpet and it was hilarious how tiny the plastic cup looked in his hands.

“What? Objectively, he’s very good looking.” Jess shrugged. “And they’re probably lonely and overworked. I’m not saying any of them is going to try something, but they can fantasize.”

“Do you fantasize about other men?” Sam asked, sounding a lot more insecure about it than he probably intended to.

“No.” Jess smirked. “But that’s only because I’m married to the better looking of the two. And I know our kids are going to be extremely cute when we have them.”

“I’m glad to know you only married me for my genes.”

“Well, what other reason is there?”

It was great to see the two of them doing so great. Which is why Dean was surprised when Sam asked to walk him down to the car. The only reason he would want to do that was because he would want to talk to him about something away from Jess’ presence.

“She’s growing a lot, huh?” he commented. He insisted on carrying Emma, despite her having a strange fascination with pulling Sam’s hair as hard as she could.

“Yeah, she’s going to be hideously tall,” Dean replied. “Perhaps you can give her some advice on how to deal with that kind of life.”

Sam laughed as the elevator door opened and they walked out of the building’s lobby.

“So what’s wrong, little brother?” Dean asked, point blank, because Emma was yawning. She was going to throw a temper tantrum if he didn’t get her in the car ASAP and let the drive back home rock her to sleep.

“Why do you assume there’s something wrong? There’s nothing wrong,” Sam said.

Dean waited until they were in front of the car to look at his brother again. Sam was toying with Emma’s ribbon looking at her with a sort of sad expression in his face.

“Jess wants to have kids,” he confessed in the end.

“Okay,” Dean said. “So… knock her up.”

Sam clenched his jaw in that annoyed way he did when he thought Dean wasn’t taking his problems seriously. Dean placed Emma on her seat and gave her Raggedy to play with because he had the impression that this talk was going to take longer than he expected. The leaned on the car and stayed in silence for a very long time. The only thing missing from when they used to have these talks back in college was the couple of beers in their hands. But Jess didn’t like when Sam drank and Dean had to drive.

“Dude, we’re so tamed,” Dean commented, with a chuckle.

“I thought we established that years ago,” Sam answered, smiling as well. They stayed in silence for a very long time, watching the people pass by and cast glances at them, wondering what those two men were doing leaning against a car in the street, until finally Sam had the courage to confess. “Do you…? I mean, do you think I’d be any good? As a dad?”

“No, I don’t think you’d be good. I think you’d be excellent.”

Sam laughed and shook his head, but he obviously felt better just by that reassurance.

“And if you have any doubts, you can call me,” Dean added, patting him in the back. “I’ll always be happy to help.”

“Thanks, but I can knock up my wife all by myself,” Sam said, rolling his eyes.

“Hey, you heard her: she doesn’t care as long as she gets some of the Winchesters’ good genes!”

“Jerk.”

“Bitch.”

“Bitch!” Emma repeated way too loud through the open window and chuckled when her dad and uncle both looked at her horrified.

“I’m gonna get in so much trouble at the daycare,” Dean mumbled. Sam laughing in his face didn’t really help with that.

But Sam wasn’t the only one with anxiety about the whole starting a family bit. Castiel had commented to him the last they’d spoken that he and Meg had filled out the papers and were now on the waiting list for foster homes.

“They warned us it could take some time,” Castiel commented nervously one night when they all gathered around to have some drinks.

Those were becoming rarer and Dean realized, with a jolt, that he had more contact with the daycare moms (who soon would turn into the kindergarten moms) those days than with his best friends. So it was nice to sit with them and find out how their lives were going. Even if their lives were such an angst fest as Castiel’s.

“But… it’s taking quite a lot more than that. We wanted a baby or a toddler, but we’ve been talking it over and maybe we could accept an older child… yes, I know this is not the most interesting topic, Benny, but it’s important to us.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Benny slurred. It was true, but it was hard to ignore the fact he was almost falling asleep in his own hand.

Castiel squinted his eyes at Benny with anger, so Dean rushed in to defuse the situation.

“Man, I don’t know what those Social Services people are thinking,” he told him. “After Sam and Madeleine, you are probably the one person I would trust my child with.”

Castiel’s eyes lit up as if Dean had just paid him the most precious compliment he could.

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Dean took a swig of his beer. “Don’t know about Meg, though, so maybe that’s their problem.”

“Very funny,” Castiel growled.

“What about me?” Benny asked. “You wouldn’t trust Emma to old Uncle Benny?”

And he chugged down half his bottle of beer before Dean could answer. He suddenly remembered why he didn’t spend as much time with Benny as he did before. It wasn’t that Benny was a bad person or that he wasn’t a great guy to be around. His drinking habits, though…

He didn’t want to say they had got out of control. But he couldn’t remember the last time he had gone out with Benny and the night didn’t end with them stealing his car keys from his pocket and dragging him to a taxi. Also, it didn’t help that he showed up smelling like alcohol and cigarette smoke to pick up his daughter from the home of whatever daycare mom had accepted to keep her around that afternoon. He tried to convince them to have more wholesome meetings, like going bowling a bit more often, but Benny insisted that it wasn’t really a party if they didn’t have at least a couple of drinks.

“Besides, this is the only time I get to relax,” he explained to his friends, who hadn’t asked for a justification, merely insinuated that perhaps he should slow down on the whiskey. “When I’m home, Andrea is all up in my business and I need to unwind, you know?”

Castiel, Dean and Sam exchanged a concerned look.

“Uh, Benny… are you sure everything is okay with Andrea?” Sam asked. It was always him who asked, because it was always him who brought that sort of topics up.

“We’re fine.” Benny rolled his eyes. “Yeah, just peachy. Why is my glass empty?”

It was impossible to talk to him when he got like that, so they desisted. But it was seriously starting to worry them.

“Maybe we should talk to Andrea,” Sam suggested after they had shipped Benny into a taxi and they were slowly making their way to their respective cars. “I mean, if it’s something more serious than just Benny drinking a lot…”

“You wanna get up on his face and call him and alcoholic?” Dean said, crooking an eyebrow.

The truth was he was concerned as well, because it was hard not to notice this wasn’t just Benny being his happy drunk self. But at the same time, he didn’t want to pronounce the “A” word, because he knew alcoholics and the damage they caused. Alcoholics screamed and got belligerent for no reason. Alcoholics spent all the money for the food in beer. Alcoholics uprooted and neglected their kids. And Benny wasn’t like that at all.

“I’m just saying,” Sam said, raising his hands, defensively. “Cas, help me out here.”

Castiel seemed hesitant, standing beside his Lincoln and toying with the keys in his hand as if he wanted to be anywhere else in the world but there, having that conversation.

“Perhaps…” he started, choked up and began again. “Perhaps staging an intervention wouldn’t be quite the best way to ask Benny if he needs help.”

“Yeah, but that’s the point of interventions,” Sam argued. “Benny doesn’t know he needs help, so we offer it anyway.”

Castiel and Dean looked at each other. They were both unwilling to deal with this, but they also knew it was pretty much inevitable. They either brought it up to Benny that they were worried about how much he drank or they stopped hanging around him altogether. And that was just not something they were willing to do, so they had to find a way around it.

“Okay, I’ll call Andrea,” Dean promised. “We’ll talk it over to her. She’s the person who knows Benny the best, so if she says she needs help, we offer it to them.”

Everybody agreed with that plan, but in the end, Dean never got around doing it.

Because the following Friday, Andrea packed her bags and ran away with the restaurant’s business partner. Benny got into a nonstop bender that lasted all weekend without calling any of his friends and because of some miracle, he didn’t end up dead or arrested.

Dean woke up Sunday morning at a criminally early hour to insistent knocking. For a moment, he thought it was Emma, who lately had got into the habit of banging on his bedroom’s door with her toy frying pan to demand breakfast (four year olds were weird), but then he realized the banging came from downstairs, accompanied by doorbell ringing.

He stepped onto the first pair of sweat pants he was able to find on check on Emma (who was still sleeping soundly despite the noise) before he went to check up what the scandal was about.

He didn’t really expect to find his friend swaying on the doorway with an almost empty bottle of vodka in his hand and looking like he had just been through all nine circles of hell.

“Dean-o!” he greeted him and embraced him into a hug. Dean could smell rancid alcohol in his clothes and breath when Benny stepped down and patted him on the cheek. “How are you doing, brotha’? I haven’t seen you in ages!”

“We went bowling last week… Benny, what the hell?” he asked. “What is wrong with you? What happened?”

Because if they had been worried that Benny had been drinking a lot more than usual before, this was completely off the charts.

“Nothing’s wrong, nothing at all!” Benny slurred in a high pitch voice. “I have never been better, Dean-o. She did it. She finally did it.”

“What are you talking about?” Dean asked, as he tried to hold Benny so he didn’t pass out on his porch. “Who did what?”

“Daddy?” a voice called from upstairs. Emma was there, rubbing her eyes and holding onto Raggedy the Cat in her yellow duck pajamas. It was obvious the noise had woken her up.

“Hey, Emma!” Benny called her, stepping into the house. “Long time no see! Look how tall you’ve got!”

Dean had exactly two seconds to grab him by the arm and prevent him from taking another step towards the stairs.

“Hey, Emma, why don’t you go get dress?” he told him. “And then come back down so I can help you with the laces, okay, baby?”

“Okay,” Emma repeated. She frowned at Benny and Dean for another second, but she turned around and went into her room anyway.

“She changes by herself? She’s so smart,” Benny chuckled. He was so happy about that he didn’t even seem to realize Dean was dragging him towards the couch. “So very smart and so very pretty. You’re so lucky, brotha’.”

“Benny, focus.” Dean sat him down on the couch and put his hands on his cheeks, forcing him to look directly at him. “What happened to you?”

Benny grumbled and muttered for a second, but then he took out some papers from the inside of his jacket. They were crumpled, stained and smelled strongly of alcohol, as if Benny had been reading them while he took his shots and spilled some of them on it. Dean still was able to make out Andrea’s neat handwriting. He skimmed over a few words, but he didn’t need to read it all to catch the entire meaning of it.

“She… she left?” he asked, stunned. He knew they had been having troubles for some time, but he never expected that. “Benny, I’m… I’m sorry.”

“Whatever.” Benny shrugged and leaned down on the couch’s back rest. “If she doesn’t wanna be around me, I say good riddance, you know? I’ll have more time to spend with you guys and she won’t be there to tell what to do. It’d be grand.”

“Benny, I don’t think…” Dean started to say, but Benny was already lying on the couch and snoring loudly.

So there was that.

“Daddy?” Emma called again. She had climbed down the stairs with the snickers in her hand, and she was looking curiously at the couch. “Is Uncle Benny sick?”

Dean was incredibly thankful she gave him such an easy way out of explaining all of this to her.

“Yes, sweetie, he is. And I need to get him to the hospital,” he lied, walking up to her and beckoning her to sit on the steps. He tied up her laces and smiled at her reassuringly. “Go put some toys in your backpack and I’m going to get you to Lisa’s, okay?”

“Okay!” Emma said, enthusiastically. She loved staying at the Braeden’s house, if only because she thought it was cool to have an older kid as her friend.

Dean fished the first clothes he found on his room’s floor and begged to all the gods he knew about that Lisa wasn’t busy that day or that Ben didn’t have soccer practice or anything like that.

“Oh, goodness,” Lisa said, when Dean explained the situation to her in a hushed voice. “Yes, of course I can watch over her for a few hours. Just bring her over here.”

“Thank you,” Dean breathed out. He texted a distress message to Castiel and Sam and put on his best face for when he found Emma waiting for him on the hallway. “Ready to go?”

Emma threw one last concerned glance at Benny’s sleeping form before they left the house.

“Is he going to be okay?” she asked, frowning deeply.

“Yes, of course he will be,” Dean assured her. He grabbed her hand as they walked down the street and Dean tried to come up with a game fast to keep his daughter’s attention away from that topic. “Hey, Emma, how many birds can you count between here and Lisa’s house?”

Emma’s face lit up with enthusiasm. She loved the games in which she could show to Dean all the things she was learning every day. She struggled with numbers after twelve, but every time Dean tried to help her, she hushed him to prove that she could do it by herself. In the end, she had to start the count over a couple of times, but she seemed pretty happy with herself by the time they arrived to Lisa’s place.

“Fourteen!” she announced happily. “We seed fourteen birds between our house and yours!”

“That’s great, Emma!” Lisa congratulated her with a smile. “Why don’t you go to the backyard and tell Ben to teach you how to play soccer?”

“Okay!” Emma said happily, her Uncle Benny’s state completely absent from her mind.

“Thank you,” Dean sighed. “I owe you big time.”

“Invite me to dinner and I’ll consider your debt wiped,” Lisa replied with a radiant smile.

Dean laughed and scratched the back of his neck, but luckily, before he had to find some polite way to tell her no, she turned around and went to check on the kids.

She had been doing that for some time. At the neighborhood potlucks or at the park when they took their respective kid there, she had been dropping hints that she would like to spend some time with him. Adult time. Alone. Dean had thought she was joking at first since they were both the only single parents in the street, but she had kept at it for some time now and there were no signs she was relenting. He was going to have to give her a definitive answer sooner or later, before it got awkward.

But right now, he had bigger problems in his hands.

Castiel and Sam both arrived within minutes of each other and thankfully understood the gravity of the situation just by taking one look at Benny. And that was before Dean showed them the letter.

“How long do you think this has been going on?” Castiel asked, practically.

“I don’t know, Cas, who cares?”

“Well, I’m just trying to determine if it was Benny’s drinking that led to Andrea’s affair or if he suspected the affair and that’s what led him into drinking.”

“I don’t think it really matters,” Sam said. “It is what it is and we have to work with what we have right now.”

They all glanced at each other, guilt gnawing at them. They had been saying they were going to talk about it for years. They had been saying they were worried about Benny for years. They had promised themselves they could talk to Andrea, and maybe if they had, she would have stayed a little longer, maybe she wouldn’t have even left at all. And now Benny was drunk and brokenhearted in Dean’s couch and they all knew they could have done more about this.

“He can’t go back to his place,” Dean determined. “He’s going to drink himself to death all alone there.”

“Well, he can’t stay at mine,” Sam argued. “Jess’ is thirty three weeks, she has cravings at odd hours and the doctor told her to take it easy. I can’t put this stress on her.”

Dean looked at Castiel, desperately pleading, but Castiel shook his head.

“I’m sorry, Dean. I can’t have Social Services showing up for another surprise inspection at our home and noticing my drunk friend there. It’ll look bad. Plus, Meg will probably rip his head off.”

“Okay, while you’re worried about your potential kids, I need you to remember I have an actual four year old kid here,” Dean told them, irritated. “Emma can’t be seeing these things. It’s not healthy or moral or whatever.”

“But we can’t leave Benny alone,” Sam argued once more. “So, what do we do?”

And just like that, they circled right back to square one. Dean started the coffee maker while the other two called their respective wives. They had the feeling they were going to be there for a while.

Benny woke up past midday, blinking in the lights and looking around confused, like he had no idea how he’d ended up in Dean’s living room.

“Please, don’t vomit on my carpet,” Dean managed to say. Benny was polite enough to bolt into the bathroom and stayed there for the next ten minutes.

His friends were waiting for him in tense concern when he returned. He looked pale and his usually round face was haggard and sagging, as if he had lost several pounds overnight. He dragged his feet to the kitchen island and planted his ass on the stool.

“What day is it?” he asked in a whisper. When they informed him, he shook his head, incredulous. “Damn. In how much trouble I’m in?”

“We didn’t have to bail you out from anywhere,” Dean said. And honestly, that was the first and last silver lining of the entire situation.

Benny sank his face in his hands and stayed silent despair for several minutes. Castiel, Sam and Dean looked at each other, unsure what to do next. Slowly, Castiel raised a hand and placed it on Benny’s shoulder. He stirred a little, but in the end, he let out a long, shaky sigh. It was as if all the tension and sadness in his body left him at once.

“I fucked up royally,” he admitted. “I mean, I knew Andrea wasn’t happy, but I never thought she’d leave.”

“Sorry, man,” Sam said. “I’m really sorry. Have you heard from her? Is she going to divorce you?”

Dean glared at him.

“I’m just saying. I have some friends from college who are excellent lawyers…”

Dean moved his head side to side as subtly as he could and Sam did everyone the favor of shutting up.

“I can’t even think about that right now,” Benny sighed. And Dean knew in his gut he was going to request a drink, so he started talking as fast as he could:

“Listen, man, we’ve talked it over and you can stay here. But you gotta promise you’re going to clean up your act, okay? I can’t have you drinking in front of my kid.”

“Dean, that’s really not…”

“I don’t think I made myself clear,” Dean interrupted him. “You either stay here voluntarily until you’re less suicidal or we tie you up. You can’t go on like this. We’re not going to let you. This is an intervention we’re doing, right now. We’re intervening you.”

“I don’t think you used that word correctly,” Castiel protested.

“Doesn’t matter,” Dean said. “The point is you already lost Andrea. We don’t want you to lose anything else. Like your driving license. Or your life. So we’re going to help you and you’re going to be fine again, you listening to me?”

He was talking really fast and he wasn’t even sure he was making too much sense. He just knew that suddenly the dam of denial behind which he kept his concern for Benny had broken and he was letting it all out. He had to get through to his friend. He just needed Benny to know there were people who _cared_ , even if Andrea hadn’t, people who wanted him to be okay and would be there for him. And he was going to drag Benny’s ass to the meetings or the therapist or whomever, if he had to, but there was no way in hell Dean was losing anyone else.

Sam and Castiel seemed a little surprised at his vehemence, but they both nodded in agreement and looked right at Benny, waiting for his response.

Benny blinked several times and shuffled in his seat, almost as if he was uncomfortable, but after a moment he nodded.

“Yeah. I’m listening to you, brotha’.”

“Good.”

Dean didn’t know exactly what to do or say from there, but Benny did. He stood up, walked around the kitchen isle and extended his arms. Dean didn’t even think about it; he just let his friend hug him as tight as he could for several minutes, patting him in the back and ignoring the strangled sobs Benny let out in his neck. When he let go of him, Sam and Castiel approached to do the exact same thing, both lingering in the hug for as long as Benny needed it to cry his sorrow out.

There was something strangely heartbreaking of watching a grown and corpulent man like Benny wipe his tears with the back of his hand.

“I’m listening,” he repeated. “Thank you.”

 

* * *

 

That was a harsh year. Not only because Benny started his path to recovery (and there was bound to be setbacks and difficulties and Dean didn’t expect any different). And not only because Baby Mary was born five weeks before schedule and Dean was having serious flashbacks in the hospital and harassing Sam every hour on the hour to get a report (he didn’t breathe easy until forty eight hours had passed and both Jess and his newborn niece were home and perfectly fine).

No, the cherry on top was that Madeleine called over the summer to announce she had cancer and she was having a double mastectomy.

“Woah, woah, Madeleine…”

“Doctors tell me it’s a very simple operation,” Madeleine said with that sterile tone of voice she used when she was talking about something difficult, yet she didn’t want to let it show how much it worried her. “At this stage the tumor is very small, but the biopsy indicates it may grow and I’m not taking any chances. So this and a few sessions of radiation should be enough to…”

“Madeleine, Madeleine, stop,” Dean said. “You can’t just call people and drop it on them that you have cancer!”

“I’m sorry, would you have rather I waited until after the doctor chopped off my breasts?”

“No, that’s not what I…” Dean groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose.

He was so annoyed that Madeleine had just told him about this as if she was commenting on the weather that he hadn’t even realized how terrified he was. Ever since Lydia had died, Madeleine had been a distant, but constant presence in both his and Emma’s lives. She had advised him when he was completely lost and Emma adored seeing her Nana for her birthday and for Christmas. She would be devastated if anything happened to Madeleine.

“Listen, don’t make a big deal out of this,” Madeleine said, still in that same clinical tone of voice. “I have it under control. I have made some arrangements.”

“What sort of arrangements?” Dean asked, even though he wasn’t entirely sure he was going to like the answer.

“In case of my death, all of my money and savings will go to a trust fund set up in Emma’s name. She may access it when she turns eighteen. I want her to have a good education and make something of herself, do you hear me, Dean? I’m trusting you with this.”

Her voice broke, ever so slightly. Dean remained in silence for a very long time before he asked quietly:

“Madeleine, do you want us to be there? For the operation, I mean.”

“I couldn’t ask you to do that. I know your job is very important and you can’t just take days off whenever. And it may be traumatizing for Emma…”

“Do you want us to be there?” Dean insisted.

There was a long silence at the other end of the line.

“Yes,” Madeleine muttered quietly.


	17. Chapter 17

Ever since Emma was capable of sitting up on her own in the car seat, Dean had taken her on road trips. They usually were very short and they came back a little before her bedtime. It had started as a ploy to get her to fall asleep: he tied her up in the backseat of the Impala and drove around until she was too tired to make a fuss about going to bed. But with time, he discovered it was good for them both.

Maybe it was something about growing on the road, but driving around always made him less anxious, as if it was a way to get rid of the week’s leftover energy. And Emma loved it too: she chattered excitedly all the way through, she sang along with Dean to the songs on the radio and she pressed her little face on the window to watch the sights go by. Every weekend, she asked Dean where they were going and Dean had to think up about some new destiny for them to visit.

He took her to his old hometown to show her where he and Sam had been born, he took it to the river so they could have a day in the water and he took her to see the world’s greatest ball of yarn. This time, she seemed to be over the moon that they were going to see Nana.

“Are we going to go to the beach, Daddy?” she asked as he adjusted the seat belt. “We always go on winter and Nana says it’s too cold. Are we going to the beach now?”

“Yes, Emma, we are,” Dean told her as he started the engine. “We’re going to the beach.”

Emma let out an excited screech and clapped her hands. However, Dean had made it a parenting policy to never lie to her, so he wasn’t going to do it now either.

“Listen to me, Emma, there’s something you need to know,” he said. She must have perceived the serious tone of voice because she immediately went quiet and fixed her enormous green eyes on him. “This trip is going to be a lot longer, because we’re going a lot further. We’re going to need two days to get there. Do you know what that means?”

“Yes!” Emma said and counted with her fingers. “Today is Friday and tomorrow is Saturday. That means we won’t be at Nana’s until Sunday.”

“Make it Saturday night,” Dean said, but he didn’t insist. He didn’t want to over complicate something that was already quite complex. “So I’m going to need you to be very patient until we get there, okay?”

“Okay,” Emma said. The grin in her face hadn’t wavered one bit, meaning she was totally still excited about the trip. Dean just prayed it would last.

“And the other thing you need to know,” Dean said, painfully aware that they were wadding into the sensitive territory now, “is that Nana is sick.”

“Sick?” Emma repeated, worry showing up in her features.

“Yes, sick,” Dean said. “That’s why we’re going to see her.”

Emma reflected on that as it need careful consideration. Dean stopped by a red light and waited for the next question he knew would come inevitably.

“Is she sick like when Uncle Benny came to stay with us?” she asked. “Or is she sick like when I ate too much cake at Todd’s birthday?”

Dean sometimes wished he had a less observing kid. It would certainly make his life a lot easier. But then again, she was Lydia’s daughter, so what could he do?

“No, Emma, Nana is so sick she’s going to have to go to the doctor,” he explained. “And the doctor is going to make her all better, and then she won’t be sick anymore.”

Of course it wasn’t going to be that simple. Emma reflected on that answer and came up with another question right away:

“And what happens if the doctor can’t make her better?”

Dean opened his mouth and closed it again. He wasn’t prepared to have to explain to Emma that all humans were mortal and dying was inevitable and people just didn’t come back from dying, because that was probably the trauma Madeleine feared would happen when she said she didn’t want them to come.

“Of course the doctor can make her better,” Dean said. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

Emma’s skepticism was evident. It was the first time Dean lied to her about something this important and he probably needed more practice at it.

“In any case, Nana is a bit scared about it, because going to the doctor is scary,” he continued after clearing his throat. “So you need to be on your best behavior, okay?”

“Does Nana get scared?”

Dean let out a chuckle at that question. Not “Do adults get scared?” but “Does _Nana_ get scared?”. Of course, Madeleine was such a towering presence it was hard to imagine her getting scared at anything.

“Sometimes. Like everybody. She just doesn’t like showing it.”

Emma reflected on this a little longer and Dean could almost see the little wheels turning inside her brain. He immediately regretted the logic he had followed. If Nana was scared about going to the doctor, then it must have been a lot more difficult that Dean was making it seem. If Nana was scared, then maybe there was the possibility the doctor wouldn’t make her better and Emma would want to know what was going to happen then.

But after a moment, Emma just nodded, as if she had gathered all the information she needed.

“I’m going to make some drawings for her,” she declared.

“I’m sure she’ll love that,” Dean said, letting out a sigh of relief that the topic was settled.

Luckily, drawing for Nana kept Emma busy until noon, when they stopped by a restaurant to have some lunch. Later, Dean found enough tourist traps to keep her entertained until nightfall. By then, Emma was so exhausted she didn't even notice how creaky the beds in the motel were or that the TV only had two channels.

Dean laid down on the other side of the king size bed, unable to fall asleep, watching his daughter's chest raise up and fall rhythmically. He wasn't as reassured as he had told Emma, of course. The same way he was sure Madeleine wasn't as confident as she had made it seem on the phone. Otherwise, why would she have set up a trust fund all of the sudden? It was as if this time, Madeleine was refusing to let Death sneak up on her unprepared, like it had when Lydia had passed.

And while Dean hated to think about all that, he couldn't help but to feel that he wasn't ready the same way she was.

He grabbed his phone and tiptoed into the bathroom, leaving the door open a crack so he could hear if Emma woke up.

Sam yawned on his ear as a greeting.

"Did I wake you?"

"No, actually, Mary needed a diaper change," Sam explained. Dean had a mental image of his brother holding the phone between his ear and his shoulder while he manipulated the wipes and the powder.

"Make sure to use some cream. Emma had very sensitive skin and the rashes..."

"I know about the rashes, Dean," Sam sighed, as he did when he knew Dean was avoiding the actual reason he had called. "What's up? Where are you?"

"Somewhere in Utah." Dean sat on the tub's edge and changed his phone to the other ear. For no particular reason, he just needed to think up of a way to bring up the topic to his brother. "Listen, you know how I've always said that if something happens to me I want Emma to live with you and Jess?"

Sam didn't answer for a several seconds. Dean wondered if it was because he had startled him or if he had fallen asleep on the phone.

"Okay," Sam muttered in the end.

"You're a lawyer, right?" Dean continued.

"Yes, Dean, I graduated. You were there, remember? There were hats with little tassels and..."

"Is there like, a legal way to leave it recorded that's how I want it to be?" Dean asked, ignoring his brother's sass. "Like, some inexpugnable document that I can sign in case... you know, just in case."

"You... could make a will," Sam suggested.

Dean was thinking of something a little less dramatic and drastic, but he supposed that they were talking about dramatic and drastic circumstances anyway.

"Okay, yeah, that sounds fun. We'll do that when we get back."

"Sure." Sam yawned again. "Hey, Dean? Don't worry, okay? I'm sure Madeleine's going to be just fine."

Dean bit back a chuckle. Sam had basically told him the same thing he had told his daughter that very morning. And it wasn't hard to see why Emma had had so much trouble believing it.

"Of course she will be," he said. It didn't sound any more convincing when he told it to himself.

 

* * *

 

The weekend went by in a blur. They arrived to Madeleine's home on Saturday night, as promised, and spent Sunday helping her make preparations for her hospital stay. Instead of staying still by the TV or with her coloring books, Emma decided she needed to make herself useful. She ran around picking up the things Dean and Madeleine indicated her to get, but also making outlandish suggestions about what things Madeleine should take with her.

"But what if she gets hungry?" she insisted when Dean told her to put the peanut butter jar back in its place.

"The hospital has food, Emma," Dean told her, patiently. "Go fetch your Nana's clothes, okay?"

At the very least, she made Madeleine laugh. Dean knew they had made the right choice by coming, because even though Madeleine talked and moved with the same confidence she always got, her eyes looked slightly dimmer and her face was a lot paler than Dean had ever seen her. They didn't talk much about what was going to happen the following day, instead choosing to just fight over who should cook dinner and what news channel they should watch. By that hour, Madeleine's bag was ready, but Emma seemed to think otherwise.

"Emma?" Dean called her. "Hey, come to the table. Dinner's ready."

Emma stood in front of the couch, staring at the bag as if she wasn't convinced they had done everything in their power to get it ready. Just when Dean was going to call her again, she ran upstairs and came back, holding what appeared to be a very dirty grey towel in her hands. It took Dean a second to realize what it was.

"Raggedy always makes me feel better when I'm sick," Emma said, as she shoved the puppet inside of the bag. "So Nana should have him for now."

She said it like there was no doubt in her mind about Raggedy the Cat's healing properties. Dean remembered that afternoon when Ellen had come home to order him around while Emma dealt with a stomach bug, and smiled to himself. Of course, thinking of Ellen made him think about Jo.

They were in Fresno. That wasn't far away from Los Angeles. Maybe after Madeleine's operation was over, he should give Jo a call, just to know how she was doing.

He shook his head to chase those thoughts away and stretched his hand towards Emma.

"I'm sure she'll be thankful for it."

The following day, both Emma and Madeleine were a lot less chatty while they drove to the hospital. But Madeleine strode inside in her heels (of course she had insisted on wearing heels that day) and announced she was there for her operation to the receptionist as if it was a very important business appointment and she wouldn't tolerate her doctor to be even a second late. Dean was thankful she was going to be sedated, because he believed Madeleine fully capable of firing her surgeon mid-procedure if she thought he wasn't doing a good job.

The receptionist was apparently a bit taken aback by all that confidence together, so she didn't react at first.

"Well?" Madeleine asked, cocking an eyebrow.

"Right away, ma'am."

An hour later, they were in Madeleine's private room (of course she had paid for a private room), when the Amazons arrived. It was actually a relief to have them there, even though they all talked at the same time and made slight digs at Dean's appearance, because Madeleine seemed a lot more relaxed with her sisters and nieces there. And of course, Emma could get some distraction by playing with her cousins (they were all girls of different ages. How was it possible that that family only had daughters? Was it like a genetic thing or something?)

"Don't you want to go to the playground with Brenda and Mattie, baby girl?"

"Maybe later," Emma replied with a very serious look in her face.

Of course she wasn't going to be moved from the room until the nurses came to wheel Madeleine to the OR. She kissed her granddaughter on the forehead and told her to be a good girl, and only then Emma could be persuaded to go with her cousins. The moment she was out of the room, Madeleine grabbed Dean's arm and pulled from him to make him come along while they rolled her down the hallway.

"Dean, listen to me. If anything happens, I want to be cremated, okay?"

"Madeleine, you're going to be fine. The doctor said it was very simple…"

"I'm just saying." Madeleine interrupted him. "Don't let my sisters talk you into burying me. And for the love of God, don't let them organize the funeral. I want something simple and they're going to make it into a nuthouse."

"I won't," Dean promised her, because telling her not to worry wasn’t working, clearly. “It’s going to be really simple and classy, okay? I swear.”

Madeleine relaxed and let go of his hand. The second the doors of the OR closed behind her, Dean felt all his calm disappear. His knees were trembling and he could feel a heaviness over his chest, as if he was about to cry. He sat down on the closest chair and pulled out his phone again. He scrolled down through his contact's list until he found Jo's name. He stared at her dark eyes and wide smile for a very long time before putting his phone away again.

It had been almost two years since he had seen her or talked to her. He couldn't just call her out of the blue, especially now. What was he going to tell her? "Hey, Emma's grandma is being treated for cancer. Wanna come down to Fresno and have a coffee with me?" It sounded ridiculous even in his head.

That wasn’t to say his resolution didn’t waver over the two hours and a half they were waiting for Madeleine to come out. Several times, he took out his phone, toyed with it, checked his Facebook, sent a message update to Sam and pretended he wasn’t dying to look at his contacts list again. He did look at it a couple of times. But he still never pressed the little green telephone.

One of Emma’s aunts offered to take her home with them when her younger cousin got tired, but Emma refused, even with the temptation of milk and homemade cookies. She sat next to Dean, with a look so serious it should have been hilarious for such a small kid.

“Is the doctor finishing up with Nana soon?” she asked a couple of times, unable to hide her impatience.

“He should be,” Dean told her, trying to sound light and failing. “Hey, why don’t you make the doctor a drawing to thank him for fixing Nana up?”

That got Emma excited enough for her eyes to glimmer again. Dean fished the sketchbook and coloring pencils from his bag and gave them to her. He really hoped it was a case of having to thank the doctor and not forgiving him for failing.

Finally, the OR’s doors opened. The doctor shook his hand as Madeleine’s sisters and nieces flocked around him to hear how everything had gone just swell.

“She’s still going to be out of it for a while,” he added. “But you can go to the room to see her.”

It was another day until they could get Madeleine back to the house and have a party with all the Amazons, and yet another day before they could fulfill Emma’s wishes of going to the beach. Dean bought the cutest swimming suit he could find (blue with The Little Mermaid on the front) and let her run across the edge of the water with her plastic bucket and shovel.

“Don’t… don’t go to deep!” he said, with a heave of fear rising up in his stomach. But to his great relief, Emma didn’t seem to have a lot of interest in the ocean. She sat on the humid sand and started building up a castle.

Madeleine laughed by his side. She looked extremely happy sitting underneath the umbrella and letting the wind blow through her dark short hair.

“I can’t believe she’s growing so fast,” she commented. “It seems like just yesterday she was this size and now…”

“Don’t say it,” Dean cut her off. “If you say it, we’ll blink and she’ll be in college.”

Madeleine chuckled again. Dean couldn’t remember a time when he had heard her laugh so much. Perhaps having a brush with cancer did that to people.

“You have been extremely useful during this time,” she told him. “Thank you.”

“It’s nothing, Madeleine. You’re family.”

The words came out from his mouth so naturally he barely realized how true they were. It had started that she was just Lydia’s family and then just Emma’s family. But she had been there for him on so many trying times, even when they didn’t agree and sometimes even bitterly disagree about many things, that it was entirely true now.

Madeleine seemed to be thinking so as well, because she leaned a little closer to him and put a hand on his forearm.

“You know, I never understood why Lydia chose you,” she said, squeezing a little. “But now I can see it. You’re a good man, Dean Winchester.”

“I try to be,” Dean replied, with a humble shrug.

They stayed in silence, watching as Emma collected sand in her bucket and carefully erected tower after tower of it, squealing and moving away every time the water came close to tear them down. It was such a peaceful sight Dean wondered why they haven’t done this before. Hell, why they didn’t do it every summer?

“I don’t like seeing you alone. You should try dating someone,” Madeleine said. Dean was so caught off guard by that statement he unglued his eyes from Emma long enough to give her a baffle look. “She would have to be good children. And if you ever do, I would really like to have the chance to meet her.”

He still didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what was more perplexing, that Madeleine was suggesting he should have a girlfriend or that she asked to have veto power in the hypothetical and improbable case he did.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that, boy,” she said, rolling her eyes, and she sounded a lot more like her old self now. “I’m just saying if there is someone in your life who you want to let in, that would be okay.”

“Are you kidding me? Have you seen how fast Emma runs?” Dean said, scrapping the bottom of the barrel for some joke he could use to get out of that conversation. “I can barely keep up. When would I have time to date?”

“Of course,” Madeleine said. She didn’t sound like she believed him. “But you know, I don’t think Lydia would have wanted to see you alone either. She would have wanted you to be happy.”

Dean breathed in deeply, watching Emma closely. Apparently, she had got tired of the sea tearing down her castle and was now screaming at the waves to go away. He wondered how that was working out for her.

“I know that,” he said. “But you know, I just don’t think of anyone that way.”

That wasn’t the full truth, but the truth was a little more complicated to explain than he cared to. And luckily for him, Madeleine dropped the subject with a shrug.

They ate sandwiches with sand between the bread and Dean made sure to apply an extra layer of sun cream on Emma. She convinced Madeleine to walk into the ocean with her. Dean promised himself he would have the picture of the two of them with their feet on the water framed, just to have a reminder of that perfectly sunny day. They stayed on the beach until the sun went down and then walked home to make their bags. It had been a great weekend and Dean was glad they could back home knowing Madeleine was okay after all.

“What say you, baby girl?” he asked Emma after she hugged Madeleine and got inside the car. “Should we stop on the dinosaurs we saw on the way here again?”

“Yeah!” Emma shouted with enthusiasm.

“Alright, well, buckle up,” Dean instructed her and turned on the radio. He was about to push his CD in when something about the random song that came on caught his attention. Two seconds listening in and he realized why.

He knew that voice. He had heard it every day for over two years. He had heard it singing to Emma and humming to herself and at his brother’s wedding.

“Hey, that’s Jo!” he exclaimed, unable to contain himself. “Emma, listen, that’s Jo!”

Emma looked at him, frowning.

“Who’s Jo?” she asked.

Dean’s heart sank slightly in his chest. Of course, Emma was too little when Jo had left to remember her and he wasn’t sure he had ever talked to her about Jo. But it was still a little disappointing.

“She’s… she’s an old friend,” Dean explained. “I haven’t seen her in a while.”

Emma tilted her head and listened to the song. It was actually pretty good, perhaps a little too pop-y for his taste, but with a really good guitar solo and of course, Jo sounded magnificent as always. A little smile appeared on Emma’s lips.

“I like it,” she determined.

The song ended even before they were out of Madeleine’s street.

“And that was ‘Lighter than Air’ by The Hunters, first single of their upcoming EP,” the radio host explained. “The Hunters are a band from Kansas and they’ve been making a splash for the last couple of years here on the West Coast, haven’t they, Gabriel?”

“Absolutely. I met them a few months ago and they’re just the nicest kids. You can catch them on the Warped Tour this summer and they’ve been confirmed as Fall Out Boy’s opening band next year…”

Dean nodded to the radio as if the two hosts were just informing him, personally, about what have become of Jo’s life. It was lucky he hadn’t called her after all, because if she was on tour, who knew how busy she would really be or where exactly she was going to be. He would have been extremely disappointed, but on the other hand, he was glad. They were playing her songs on the radio. She was recording her music and giving concerts. That was amazing. He was so happy for her…

“… and now on the new artists’ discovery hour…”

An extremely auto tuned girl started singing about a boyfriend that had left her.

“Daddy, can you put on something else?” Emma asked, wrinkling her nose in disgust.

“You read my mind,” Dean said and he pushed his CD in. The car was filled with Led Zeppelin’s guitars and Emma started bouncing her head up and down, following the rhythm. Dean had never felt prouder.

 

* * *

 

Dean moved around the cake to analyze it from every angle. Madeleine had renounced to baking the cake that year and Dean, who was better at cooking than anyone gave him credit for, had decided not to risk it and ordered one. He knew the kindergarten moms were going to be all up in his business about this, analyzing everything from the decorations to the security measures relentlessly. Dean was decided to prove he could organize a birthday party as perfectly as any of them.

But that wasn’t the only reason he was being overly cautious about this. Emma hadn’t paid attention to her other birthdays because she didn’t know what they were about, but this one she did know. Ever since she had learned the concept of a birthday, she had been asking over and over when was hers. It was important. If there was a first birthday Emma was going to remember it was probably going to be this one. So he wanted her to have as much fun as it was possible.

When he decided that the cake was satisfactory, he started sinking the candles into it. Five blue candles forming a perfect line to match the blue frosting. The lady at the bakery had asked if he didn’t prefer pink frosting, but those days Emma’s favorite color was blue. It fluctuated every couple of weeks, but for now he had chosen bright blue decorations for everything and Emma had approved of them happily.

He put the cake into the fridge and stepped outside to look at the clear sky. They’d had a mild winter and although it was chilly outside, it didn’t seem like that was going to change that day. It didn’t matter. The children could run around on the backyard and that could keep them warm. And if it got too bad, he could ask Sam to help him move the couch aside. He had read about some indoor activities on the Internet to keep them occupied. He hadn’t hired a clown because at least three of the dozen children invited were terrified of them, which was a very sensible attitude in his opinion.

But it didn’t matter. He was ready.

He carefully tiptoed into her room. She was fast asleep, with Mr. Eight the Octopus clutched to her chest.

“Emma, hey, baby girl, wake up,” he said, softly, shaking her shoulder. Emma’s green eyes fluttered open and she offered him a groggy smile. She was always a ray of sunshine in the mornings, just like her mother. “Happy birthday.”

It took a few seconds until she registered what he was saying.

“It’s my birthday,” she said, her eyes opening wide. “It’s my birthday!”

She jumped up and lassoed her arms around Dean’s neck, laughing. She chattered excitedly all throughout breakfast and practically bounced up and down on her chair when Dean said her present was going to be a surprise. That early hurricane of activity was a sign of what the rest of the world was going to be like.

Sam and Jess arrived with Baby Mary and Madeleine around midday. Emma ran around all of them demanding her presents. Sam and Jess had contributed to the bike they were going to give her later, but Madeleine had brought her a very beautiful porcelain doll. Emma laughed as she unwrapped her.

“She’s almost as big as Mary!” she said, holding it near her cousin for comparison. “Thank you, Nana!”

Mary was too young to know what was going on, of course, but she smiled when they sat her with Emma on the couch and took pictures of the two of them. They had to, because in twenty minutes more, the kindergarten moms started to pour in, slowly, but steadily. Dean sat them around on the living room and offered coffee for all of them and to his luck, they were all too busy swooning over Mary to pay too much attention to him.

“She’s so cute! How old is she?”

“Seven months,” Jess said, balancing her on her knee so they could all see her. “She’s gonna be tall like her dad.”

He noticed Emma staring at the mom’s from the backyard’s door.

“Hey, baby girl, go play with your friend,” he told her. “I’ll bring you all snacks, okay?”

“Okay, Daddy,” she said, smiling again. But Dean knew his daughter. He knew the pensive shadow that crossed her eyes. He was going to have to talk to her about it later.

“Hey,” Sam said when Dean had two seconds of breath to stand next to his brother. “Did you hear of Benny and Cas?”

“Benny’s not coming,” Dean informed him. “He’s… going out of town to meet up with Andrea and talk divorce.”

“That’s gonna be rough.” Sam cringed.

“Yeah, we should keep an eye on him,” Dean agreed. “And Cas… he and Meg should already be here.” He checked his cellphone to see the hour and shrugged. They had been a bit secretive those days and when he’d talked to Cas, he said they were a bit busy, but that they would be there. Dean hadn’t pressed for details, but he soon found out what his friend had meant.

He was monitoring the kids playing tag, making sure none of them crashed on the table and patiently nodding to Giselle, one of the moms, who was telling him about her soup recipe when he spotted Castiel out of the corner of his eye.

“Hey, Cas!” he greeted him, so glad he had an excuse to escape that culinary chat.

“Dean,” Castiel greeted him with a radiant smile, as if he was the birthday boy, striding into the backyard. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

Meg was on the doorway, beckoning to someone.

“Come on, kiddo. Don’t be shy.”

And to Dean’s absolute surprise, a blonde girl walked towards them and gave Dean a timid look.

“Dean, this is Claire,” Castiel introduced her when Meg gently pushed her closer. “She’s our foster daughter. Claire, this is Dean Winchester. He’s a good friend of mine.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Winchester,” Claire said, with a tone far too serious for any kid as she offered him her hand.

“Nice to meet you too,” Dean said, a bit flustered. Well, damn, Cas could have called ahead and told him about this, but judging by the smirk in Meg’s face, she had probably convinced him it was best to catch him unaware. “Umh… Emma, come here!”

Emma came running and after they made the presentations, Dean encouraged her to take Claire to play with her friends. They were a couple of years younger than Claire, as Castiel informed him, but there shouldn’t be a problem.

“She’s very agreeable,” he said, smiling wide, obviously as taken with Claire as Dean had been with Emma and Sam with Mary. “And she’s really smart. She’s adjusting very well to her new school. She reads a lot…”

“She likes The Hobbit,” Meg added. “Kind of a small nerd; that’s why she gets along with Cas.”

Dean wasn’t quite sure he believed what he saw. Meg was just as happy, if not more, than Castiel.

“Well, who would have thought? Maternity suits you.”

Meg punched him on the arm as a response.

“We’re going to adopt her,” Castiel said, ignoring the bickering going on, his eyes shining bright with illusion. “It’s going to be a slow process, but we hope by this time next year…”

“That’s great, guys. Congratulations.”

In the end, though, he wasn’t sure if it was a good thing they had brought Claire along. Emma seemed taken with her because she and Ben were the only two older kids there and when he looked again, he found them talking near the juice bawl. He approached them very slowly, pretending he was picking up the empty plastic plates and cups, fully intending to eavesdrop and see how they were getting along.

“So Aunt Meg is your new mommy now?” Emma asked. She was apparently trying to figure out why she had never seen Claire before.

“I guess,” Claire shrugged and looked around at the women that had come out to see if their kids wanted to give them their coats. “Which one’s yours?”

“I don’t have a mommy.”

She said it without a trace of sorrow or curiosity, the same way she would say “It’s sunny today” or “I wanna go to bed now”. As if it was a matter of fact: some kids had a mom, some kids didn’t, and she just belonged to the second category.

Claire was old enough to understand that was not how the world worked.

“Of course you do. Everybody has a mom!”

“Well… I don’t.” Emma shrugged. Claire kept staring at her, as if she knew that wasn’t the end of the statement. “I have my Nana,” Emma added, as if that would get her new friend to stop looking at her like that.

“Your Nana is just your mom’s mom,” Claire insisted. “You have to have your own mom.”

“Why can’t she be my mommy?”

Dean had heard enough by that point. He fled to the kitchen and came back balancing the enormous blue cake in his hands.

“Time to blow out the candles!” he announced out loud, trying to sound as cheerful as he could. “Come on, gather up, everybody. We’re blowing out the candles!”

Emma stared at him as he settled the cake down on the table, with an expression so serious, so lost in thought, as if she was trying to figure out a great mystery or as if she was trying to readjust her vision of the world after a big shake up. For a second or two, he thought he was going to have that conversation right then and there, with all the other kids and the moms and…

But then she smiled and screamed: “Cake!” and Dean knew he was safe for now. She blew out the candles as her friends sang Happy Birthday out of tune and then she insisted in helping giving out the pieces. Less than an hour later, the kids started getting tired from the sugar crush, so one by one the moms picked them up and took them home. A couple of them actually congratulated Dean on the way out and he tried to pretend their words didn’t feel as much of a triumph as they did.

Sam, Jess and Madeleine stayed to help clean up (Dean convinced them on the grounds that they were family, so they had to, and because Baby Mary was peacefully napping in her chair and they would want to wake her up by moving her), and in the meantime, he went up to make sure that Emma finished her bath and went to bed on time.

“Did you like your birthday, baby girl?” he asked, as she put her hands up so he could help her with her nightgown.

“Yes! I had so much fun!” she exclaimed. “Can we invite everybody for your birthday too, daddy?”

“Bet that will be cool,” Dean snorted. He moved the covers so Emma could get inside her bed and made sure she had Mr. Eight, Raggedy and the yet unnamed doll nearby. “Do you need me to read you a story?”

Emma shook her head. The strangely serious expression had returned to her face and Dean just knew he had to brace himself for what would come next.

“Daddy, why don’t I have a mommy?”

Dean’s mouth hanged agape. He thought he was ready. He thought he could tell her and it wouldn’t be hard, but now the moment had come and he was choking up pathetically and Emma was looking at him with those enormous green eyes that were a reflection of his and _waiting_.

“Claire says everybody has a mommy,” she insisted. “So why I don’t have one?”

“You… you do have a mom,” Dean managed to stutter. “But it’s… it’s complicated, okay? It’s… why don’t we talk about this tomorrow? You’ve had a long day and I have a lot to clean…”

He feared Emma wouldn’t let him off the hook so easily, but after a few seconds, she nodded and settled down against the pillows.

“Okay,” she said. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

The tone in her voice indicated she wasn’t going to forget about it any time soon.

Like in many occasions in the past five years, Dean had to thank God for Madeleine. He found her washing the dishes by the sink and approached her to tell her about the conversation he’d just had with Emma.

“I think we should take her this year.”

He didn’t need to clarify where he meant. She put down the dish she had in her hand and nodded, very slowly.

“Yes. She’s ready.”

It had been Madeleine who helped Emma into her black dress and told her they were going to a place where they needed to be quiet and respectful. She graciously found a way to explain to Emma what someone being dead meant and what a cemetery was. Emma listened to her with eyes wide open and when they finally stood in front of Lydia’s headstone, she narrowed her eyes as if she was trying to figure out what the letters and the numbers meant.

“So she’s underneath here?” she asked, looking down at her Mary Jane shoes with a confused frown.

“No, sweetie. Just her body is,” Madeleine said. “Her mind, her soul, is far, far away from us.”

“Where?” Emma demanded to know.

Madeleine knelt in front of her. Dean never would have thought he would see the day Madeleine actually did that in her designer pantsuits, but he decided to keep quiet while she put her hands on Emma’s face and made her look at her.

“No one knows,” she told her. “Some people say we go to Heaven. Some people we come back as a flower or as birds. But no matter where your mom is, she loved you very much while you were in her belly, and she would be very, very, proud of you. That is what you need to know. Okay?”

Emma scrunched up her nose, the way Dean knew meant she was holding back her tears. Perhaps she didn’t understand everything Madeleine was telling her, but she understood the importance of that moment, and it deeply touched her. But she was brave: she nodded and hugged Madeleine very tight for several minutes. Then she turned around and stretched her arms, so he picked her up and hugged her tight, pressing her little face over his shoulder. She let out a slow deep sob and Dean had to swallow several times before he found his voice:

“It’s okay, baby, it’s okay. We’re here. We love you. Do you hear me, Emma? I love you very, very much.”

Emma cried for a few seconds more and then she took a deep, shaky breath.

“I love you, Daddy.”

“I know,” Dean replied, gently patting her in the back. “I love you too. Very much.”

And that was the end of it. It was simpler than he thought, yet incredibly hard.

Afterwards, Emma was unusually quiet for several days, but as the weeks went by, she recovered her happy demeanor. She chattered excitedly about her friends, both real and imaginary, and what they had done that day. She played with her plush toys and had tea parties where the doll Madeleine had given her (since then christened Rosie because of the flower in her dress) was the guest of honor. Sometimes she would ask to see pictures of Lydia or asked questions about her. Madeleine and the kindergarten moms assured him that was completely normal.

“It’s part of her story, her identity. Just answer her questions with honesty and it should be fine.”

Dean tried. He did. But whenever he started talking about Lydia, he would inevitably get choked up and Emma ended up hugging him and changing the subject. That wasn’t fair. He didn’t want to be that guy. He didn’t want to put the burden of his own grief of her.

“Hey, Benny, you know that therapist you are seeing?” he asked on the phone one Saturday morning while he watched Emma play in the garden happily. Spring was edging closer and the days were getting warmer and of course she wanted to soak up in as much as sun as she could. “Is he any good?”

“Why, brotha’? Are you thinking about going?”

“No,” Dean said, because when someone asked him a direct question about his well-being, his first instinct was to deny there was anything wrong at all. “No, I was just… just wondering.”

“Well, yeah, he’s good,” Benny said. “But he specializes in addiction. Maybe seeing a grief counselor would be best for you.”

“It was a hypothetic question, Benny. Forget I asked.”

“Have it your way.” Dean could almost hear the shrug in his friend’s voice. “But you know, if you need it, you may ask me again. No judgment here.”

“Yes, I know. Thanks.”

He ended the call and stepped on the doorway. Emma was standing on the tip of her toes, waving her hands at a bird standing on the branch and chirping curiously at her.

“You made a new friend, baby girl?” he asked, amused.

Emma turned to look at him with a smile.

“I think it’s my mom,” she declared, matter-of-factly. “Nana did say she could come back as a bird.”

Dean was too astonished by that to actually formulate a coherent answer. He could have told her Lydia also believed there was a second time around. That she would have loved to be a bird and fly up in the sky and check on them every now and then.

Luckily for him, Emma didn’t turn around, so he couldn’t see the face he was making. But she did turn with curiosity when his phone started ringing.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Dean!” a preppy voice said on the other end. “Long time, no talk!”

Emma frowned at him, perhaps wondering what was powerful enough to paralyze her father in his spot and made him do that funny face, but Dean was simply too stunned to realize it.

“Jo?”


	18. Chapter 18

Jo found him after scanning the crowd for the second time. The fact he was actually there gave her a boost of adrenaline for the rest of the show.

It was actually pretty calm compared to the shows they usually did: they played in bars or festivals where people piled up around the stage and chanted along to their lyrics or the lyrics of the covers they played. That night, Dorothy had got them a pretty small venue, with actual tables and actual chairs for the people to sit around the stage. Jo sang while sitting on a stool and Ash played an acoustic guitar to calmer versions of their songs under the dim lights, accompanied by the clinking of the glasses and beers of the crowd. It was very intimate and very tranquil and Jo found herself wishing they would do that sort of presentations more often.

And since it was their hometown, a lot of people they hadn’t seen in a while were there. Ellen and Bobby sat on a table away from the stage and toasted to her whenever they finished a song. She had invited some other people, mostly friends from college like Anna and Cassie, whom she kept contact with through Facebook. Some had confirmed they’d be there but haven’t actually showed up and she figured it would be the same with _him_.

But he was there, by the counter, sipping a beer all by himself and with his eyes fixed on her. Jo wondered if he noticed how much she was staring at him from that distance and tried to stop, but every single time she got distracted, her eyes wandered in his direction as if they had a will on their own. She just couldn’t believe he was really there. She was so sure he would be too busy and of course, he was under no obligation of coming at all. She hadn’t even dared hope…

Ash finished the song in a sweet, prolonged note and all the patrons started clapping enthusiastically, some even whistling their approval at them. Jo forced herself to pay attention and smile at them.

“That’s all we had for you tonight,” she said. “We’re Jo and Ash from The Hunters. We’re very honored that you joined us tonight in our hometown. Thank you.”

Ash played a last riff just to show off his skills and the two of them stood up to take a bow. A second later, as she was coming off her stage, Ellen was there to wrap her in a very tight embrace.

“That was beautiful, honey,” she told her. “Finally, a way I can enjoy your songs without going deaf.”

“We’re not that loud,” Jo complained.

“What?” Bobby put a hand around his ear and leaned closer to pretend to hear her better. “I’m sorry; I’m still deaf from the last sample you sent us.”

“Pretty sure that’s the age setting in, old man,” Jo joked. Bobby let out an offended gasp and Ellen laughed at them both.

“Thank you for coming, Mama Harvelle,” Ash said, stretching his arms as if he expected Ellen to hug him too. After some hesitation, Ellen gave in.

“You’re very welcome, boy. Glad to see you’ve been eating some more.”

“Yeah, we make brownies a lot.”

“Hey, Ash, I think those are your old biker friends in the back.” Jo pointed at them. Partly because she saw them beckoning at Ash and partly because she didn’t want Ash to specify what kind of brownies it was that they baked in the little apartment they shared with Charlie and Garth.

“It is them!” Ash exclaimed with his face lighting up. “I’m gonna go say hi!”

Jo let Ellen and Bobby hugged her one more time before she also went up to greet her old friend.

She couldn’t remember the last time she was this nervous. Not even when Dorothy had introduced them to the label’s executives, not even when they had first walked into a recording studio. Because she had an approximate idea of what she was walking into during those occasions, while here, it was something completely different. But she decided to go about it the same way she went everything when she was nervous: by feigning confidence.

“Well, if it isn’t Dean Winchester in the flesh!” she greeted him as she approached him.

He laughed and stood up from his stool. He raised his arms as if he wanted to give her a hug, but before she could take a step, he let one of them hung at the side of his body and stretched the other to scratch the side of his neck.

“Hey… you,” he muttered. “You look… you look good.”

“Oh, my God, you dork,” Jo laughed, unable to contain the fireworks of happiness going off in her stomach. “Come here!”

They hugged for a very long time and it felt… it felt amazing. Everything about that hug should be new after over two years apart, but it felt just like it did when he hugged her before she went home every night: the scent of his shaving cream, the warmth of his body pressed against her. It was the last thing she needed to convince herself this wasn’t a dream. He was really there. Finally.

His smile was just as she remembered it, as warm and as kind. But some things had changed. His chin was pointer and his cheeks less puffy, as if he had lost weight. His hair was longer, with bangs pointing to the side instead of the buzz cut she was used to seeing him with. The bags underneath his eyes were less pronounced, but the creases around them were just a little bit deeper.

He was even more handsome than before. How was that even possible?

She realized that they had been staring at each other for several seconds without saying a word, so she quickly started speaking:

“It’s so good to see you…”

“You were awesome…” he started right at the same time.

They stopped and chuckled at the same time. It was awkward as all hell, but Jo didn’t feel embarrassed for it.

“I’m so glad you could come…”

“I like what you did to your hair,” he said at the same time. They went quiet again, but this time Jo decided it was time to bulldoze her way through the ice.

“Thank you. It was Dorothy’s suggestion,” she said, pulling from one of the locks. It was styled in loose curls instead of her usual straight style and she had added some red strands here and there to make it seem less monotonous. “My mom was horrified when she saw it.”

“Well, I love it,” he declared. “You look like a sexy rockstar.”

That unbalanced her a little bit. She had expected compliments from him because he was always so considerate and nice, but that he stated point blank something like that, she just…

Ash put a hand on her shoulder making her jump.

“Hey, the guys and I are going to a bar for some drinks,” Ash said. It didn’t matter to him that they were already in a bar, so Jo understood what he meant: we’re going to a louder, fuller place, probably with lots of people wearing leather and smoking things of dubious origins. “Wanna come?”

“No, I’m fine.” Jo shook her head and then discreetly pointed at Dean.

“Oh, you’re the dad of that cool kid at the wedding!” Ash remembered as it had been just last week. He offered his fist for Dean to bump. “How you’ve been, dude?”

“Good, good,” Dean said, apparently amused by Ash enthusiasm. “Great to see you too.”

“How’s the kid?”

“Oh, man, she’s amazing.”

And just as Jo knew he would, Dean whipped out his phone and showed them his screensaver. It was hard to believe that little girl was the same baby Jo had left behind, but there were a few obvious sings: she still had the same dark blonde hair and of course Dean hadn’t cut an inch of it. Her green eyes were just as enormous, but she could have sworn there were even more freckles on the bridge of her nose and her cheeks.

“Oh, my God, she’s so cute!” Jo said, but she wasn’t sure the words came out right. There was a lump in her throat and she had to swallow to try to undo it. “She’s grown so much, I can’t believe it.”

“She’s going to first grade next year. She can count to twenty,” Dean said. He sounded like he was bragging about Emma being the first woman on Mars and to him, there probably wasn’t a difference. “She’s just so great, Jo, you’d be so…”

He stopped short and Jo didn’t know what she would be if Emma was there.

“That’s great,” Ash said, patting Dean in the shoulder. “You sure you don’t want to come?”

“No, Ash, don’t worry. You go have fun. I’ll meet you back at the hotel, okay?”

Ash clicked his tongue and winked his eye before walking towards his leather wearing friends, who received him with loud cheering and clapping. Ash raised his fists in the air as if he had just been proclaimed emperor of something and in no time he disappeared between his friend’s hugs.

“How long do you have?” Jo asked, turning her attention back to Dean.

“Actually, I’m in the clear. Emma is at a sleepover with Cas’ daughter… yeah, many things have changed.” He chuckled at Jo’s face.

“Oh, hell, we have a lot to catch up on,” Jo declared. “Stay. Let’s have a beer. Please?”

She didn’t realize she had grabbed his hand or that he was squeezing it so tight until Dean looked down at it. She was about to let go of him, but he still smiled at her when he squeezed back.

“Of course.”

She was sure she was going to have to beg more, to assure him he wasn’t interrupting any family time or anything. But he was still smiling as she guided him to the table where Ellen and Bobby were waiting.

“Winchester,” Ellen greeted him, crooking an eyebrow.

“Hey, Mrs. Harvelle… you’re looking good,” Dean said. His charming did nothing to smooth out Ellen’s glare, so he cleared his throat nervously and shook the hand Bobby was offering him.

“Heard a lotta things about you, boy,” he said, his going gruffer and his frown deeper for some reason.

“All of them good, I’m hoping,” he said, laughing nervously.

The joke fell flat, or maybe Ellen and Bobby were doing the whole intimidating parents thing because they thought making Dean nervous was funny. In any case, they declared they couldn’t stick around (Jo made a joke about them being too old for partying late and earned a death glare from her mom) and reminded her they were having dinner the following day. As if Jo would forget.

“They look good,” Dean commented, as they settled down with a beer each.

“Yeah, I’m glad they’re together,” Jo said. “You know, I work a lot, so I can’t always see mom. Last time, Bobby drove her to California for my birthday and we all went to the Santa Monica Pier. It was fun.”

“You know, I heard your song on the radio a few months ago. I thought it was awesome. You’re really good.”

“Ah, thank you. We were so freaked out the first time we heard it too. Dorothy says the single is selling well online, which means a lot of people are just illegally downloading it…”

“Well, I’m gonna buy it,” Dean promised. “I’m sure Emma will love to listen to it. She still loves to dance, you know, she’s just moving around all day. She’s like a little squirrel…”

“You guys still go to the park?”

“You still drink that weird tea?”

“You still have Emma’s birthday as your password for everything?”

It was like nothing had changed at all. Dean told him about Benny’s separation and Sam and Castiel’s daughter and Jo told him about Charlie, who had gone to see her mother and do the official introduction of Dorothy as her girlfriend and of Garth, who also had gone to spend time with his girlfriend’s family.

“They actually got together at our farewell party,” Jo told him, giggling at the memory. “And then Bess managed to get her college to transfer to California. She’s such a sweet girl, she comes around our apartment a lot, she cooks for us…”

“And what about you?” Dean asked. His green eyes were fixed on her, almost as if he didn’t want to miss any detail of her face while asked this question. “Are you still with, what was his name? That boy with that denim jacket…”

“Oh, Alfie.” She shook her head. “Nah, we called it off before I moved. It wasn’t meant to be, you know?”

“That’s too bad,” he said. But Jo thought she saw him smile around his beer when he took a swig. “And you haven’t caught the eye of any Hollywood hunks?”

“Well, I heard Brad Pitt is single again, so perhaps I’ll give him a call,” she joked. Dean chuckled, but he kept looking at her as if that hadn’t answered his question. “No, I’m going solo these days.”

She didn’t ask about him. A part of her just didn’t want to hear him say he had met someone and she was great and Emma adored her or something like that. So they quickly moved on from it and started talking about the fate of Jo’s Beetle (her mother had kept in storage for a few months, but Jo had ultimately gave her permission to sell it before it rusted off). They ended up losing track of time, because by the time Jo looked at the clock again, it was two and a half in the morning.

“Oh, damn, really?”

“You have to go back?”

He looked disappointed. As if it had been far too brief and he wasn’t ready to say goodbye to her again. Or perhaps that was what Jo was thinking.

“I should probably catch a cab and… the hotel isn’t really that far away.”

“I’ll drive you,” Dean offered. “I have my car right outside, I can… I mean, if you want to.”

Jo saw no reason to say no. They had talked more than they had drunk, after all, and besides, she felt safer around him. It was something that just never seemed to change.

He still drove the Impala.

“Oh, I could never get rid of her,” he said when Jo pointed that thing must have been at least forty years old. “And she still works just fine, so if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, you know?”

“She probably eats so much gasoline you alone are raising the global temperature,” Jo replied, rolling her eyes.

“Oh, don’t tell me you’ve turned into a hippy,” he complained. “California has changed you, Joanna Beth.”

“Yeah, it did.”

She didn’t mean for it to sound as serious as it came out. But it was so blunt and so sudden that Dean turned his head slightly at her. There something so sad about that look that Jo felt compel to start blurting out nonsense.

“I mean, it was the first time I was away from home, and I wasn’t exactly alone, but… it was a big change, it took me some time to adjust…”

“I know,” he muttered. He stopped at a red light and took a deep breath before turning his attention completely towards her. “For the record, I think the change was for the better. You seem so much happier. So more confident. So… I don’t know. Just different. But in a good way.”

Jo didn’t know what to answer to that, so she said nothing. They sat in that uncomfortable silence until the light changed and they could move on. Dean’s fingers were fumbling around the wheel and Jo knew, she just knew, he was thinking about turning on the radio. And when he did, the moment for talking would have passed and she still wouldn’t have asked the question that was burning on the tip of her tongue.

Two years ago, she had swallowed up her feelings and thoughts. But he was right. She was a new Jo.

“Why you never called me?” she asked. She focused her eyes on the streetlights, perhaps to give him time to come up with a decent answer. He still failed at it.

“I… I thought you would be… too busy,” he muttered. “New place, new job… just… I didn’t want to…”

“You went completely radio silent on me,” Jo pointed out, slowly turning her heads towards him. “You didn’t have to call; you could have texted me or sent me a Facebook message…”

“I… well, I…” Dean stuttered and then clenched his jaw for a second before replying back: “You didn’t call me either.”

“Yes, I did.”

“One time to tell me you would be in town and casually invite me to your concert doesn’t really count, Jo.”

“Well, you came, so I guess it does,” Jo said.

It really was hard to sound annoyed when she knew he was right. She had been in town before, but always for a few short days and she could have called him. She had done the exact same thing she was accusing him of.

And now she had ruined the night’s good mood completely by bringing it up.

They parked in front of the hotel. Dean let the engine die, but Jo didn’t get out. She wasn’t sure she could, not now. Because this conversation wasn’t over. At least, she didn’t want it to be over. Not like this, anyway.

Dean didn’t, either, because he turned towards her and took a deep breath.

“Look, I wanted to call you,” he confessed. “I missed you. I thought about it so many times…”

“And why didn’t you?”

“Why didn’t you?” he shot back.

Jo took a deep breath. At that rate, they were going to sit there all night going in circles, not telling each other the truth. And she didn’t want that. She didn’t want to lose her friend now that she had found him again.

But the answer was just too complicated to give it in full. And it implied admitting things that had been left unsaid for far too long. So Jo took a moment to think about it.

“I didn’t think you’d want me to call,” she said, very slowly. “I mean, I… you and I were friends, but I don’t think we were that close. I mean, I took care of your daughter and we had some talks and it was nice, I really liked that. But… asides from that, we… you had other people in your life that…”

She left her voice trailed off. She was still on the edge of saying things she shouldn’t. And besides, Dean was licking his lips nervously, obviously searching for words.

“Yeah, I thought the same thing,” he admitted. “I was just some guy you worked with for a while. I didn’t want to… butt into your life or something like that. You needed time to figure yourself out and I wanted to give it to you.”

Jo stayed in silence a few seconds, processing everything that had just been said. She snorted.

“What?” Dean asked, frowning in confusion.

“We both wanted to call, but we both thought we weren’t that close anyway,” Jo pointed out. “We’re so stupid.”

A slow smile bloomed in Dean’s lips.

“I guess when you put it like that, it is pretty stupid.”

Jo chuckled and a second later, Dean was laughing out loud along with her.

And the tension was gone again, as if it had never been there to begin with. And that was what Jo had missed the most about Dean: everything always seemed so easy around him. That feeling that she could tell him anything and he would just _get_ her. It was there as if it had never gone away.

“Oh, God,” Jo muttered, wiping the tears from her eyes. “That was just…”

“Are you going to stay?” Dean asked. “I mean, I know you have to go back to L. A., but are you going to stay for a while at least?”

“Yeah, I’m actually free until the end of the week. We’re releasing the LP next week and Dorothy wanted us to have some time to ourselves because then it’s going to be all promotions and tours and stuff…”

“Would you like to…? I don’t know, go for an ice cream? With me and Emma?” Dean asked. Jo was taken aback for a second and of course he interpreted her silence as a refusal. “I mean, if you’re too busy…”

“I’m not busy at all,” Jo interrupted him. “I’d love to see Emma.”

The crinkles around his eyes when he smiled were still far too adorable.

Jo left the car and crossed the street on shaking legs. On the door of the hotel, she stopped and looked over her shoulder. The Impala was still parked across the street. Dean was waiting for her to go inside, as he always did. That hadn’t changed either. She waved at him, even though it was too dark to see if he waved back or not.

Once she was back in her room, she sat on her bed and sank her face into her arms. She was regretting now not staying with her mother and Bobby, even if it meant sleeping into the sewing room Ellen had turned her old bedroom into. Because at least then she would have had someone to talk to, to go over all the things she was thinking about.

She hadn’t been entirely honest with Dean. The reason she hadn’t called him was because she thought maybe that way she would get over his feelings for him. Maybe that way her next relationship wouldn’t fail the way it had with Samandriel. And she thought maybe, seeing Dean tonight would help her find out if the distance had helped.

It hadn’t. She wasn’t over him. Not even a little bit.

 

* * *

 

“Emma, please, this is important,” Dean said, holding the dresses in front of his daughter. “Which one you like the most, the yellow one or the white one?”

“Don’t wanna wear a dress,” Emma protested, wrinkling her nose at both of them. “Why can’t I go like this?”

Dean took a look at the paint-stained overall she was wearing. It had been Art Friday at the kindergarten and when Emma presented him with a painting of the beach (it was mostly a yellow stain with another blue stain with a surprisingly straight white line to represent the sea foam separating them both), he didn’t think he reacted as enthusiastically as Emma was expecting him to. So now she was retaliating by being uncooperative and not even the promise of ice cream was enough to snap her out of her irritation.

“That’s not… Emma, come on, you look very pretty in these dresses,” Dean insisted. “Don’t you want to look pretty when we go out?”

Emma sat on the bed and crossed her arms over her chest. Her strawberry blonde hair was so long it almost fell over her eyes and she blew it away out of the corner of her mouth. In moments like those, Dean was distinctively reminded of Sam when he was her age and refusing to eat his veggies.

“Why do we have to go out?” she whined. “Why can’t we stay and watch a movie?”

Dean mentally counted until five before leaving the dresses on her chair and sitting down right next to her.

“Look, Emma, this is… this is important to me, okay? And it’s important to you, too,” he explained to her. “We’re going out with an old friend. Her name is Jo. You don’t remember her, but she knew you from when you were very little.”

That managed to catch her attention. Dean didn’t often talked about “when she was very little” because that was veering of the other topic he avoided talking about.

“She knew my mommy?” Emma asked, her eyes widening with curiosity.

“No, she didn’t. I’ve only met her after your mommy passed.”

“Oh.” Emma lost all interest and looked away.

“But she’s excited to see you,” Dean continued. “She used to stay with you when I had to go to work. She took you to the park a lot and she used to play with you and sing you songs… I have a picture of the two of you. Look.”

He searched for it and held his cellphone for Emma to see. She stared at the picture of Jo pushing her swing, that last day at the park before she left for LA. Slowly, Emma raised her eyes towards him.

“So… she was _like_ a mommy?”

Dean opened his mouth and closed again. He wasn’t sure he liked where her reasoning was going, but he wasn’t sure he could deny it. Jo had been, for all intents and purposes, the closest thing Emma had had to a mother when she was just a baby.

“She…” he started, cleared his throat and began again. “You know no one could replace your mommy. But Jo did look after you and she cared for you, very much. She went away because she wanted to be a singer, but now she’s visiting and she really, really wants to see you. So… please… could you just pick a dress?”

Emma stared up at his face with such seriousness he was almost sure she was going to refuse on the basis of him not telling her all of this beforehand. But then she looked down at the dresses he had offered her and shook her head.

“Not those.” She stood up, dragged her chair to the closet’s door and with amazing dexterity, she stood up on it and picked a denim jumper. “This one,” she determined.

It took a second for Dean to process the reason she had chosen it. He had offered her the pretty dresses he put on her when they visited Madeleine or Jess’ family was in town and he wanted to show her off. Emma had picked up the kind of clothes she would wear when they went to the park on Saturdays.

Obviously, they had very different ideas of what this date… appointment… reunion was going to be about. But he couldn’t say she was completely in the wrong.

“Yeah, that looks good,” he agreed. “Put it on and come downstairs so I can make your braids.”

Emma was unusually quiet while he brushed her hair and tied up her braids. She usually chattered excitedly about her friends at the kindergarten or the teachers or something. This time she seemed to be lost in thought, but Dean didn’t have time to find out why that was before the doorbell rang. His stomach did a backflip he wasn’t expecting and he had to take a deep breath to steady himself before he stood up to open.

Having Jo standing in his porch like that brought some serious flashbacks from the first time he had seen her. But at the same time, things couldn’t be more different. Back then, five years ago, he had been tired and frustrated and not very happy with this strange girl that came hours too late hoping to get a job. Right now, his heart started pounding harder on his chest when she smiled at him and the only thought it crossed his mind she looked incredible in her red leather jacket and jeans.

“Hi,” he greeted her, not even realizing he was smiling like a fool.

“Hi,” Jo repeated back at him. “Are you going to let me in or…?”

“Right, of course.” He stepped aside with a chuckle to make way for her.

Jo stopped in the middle of the living room to look around. Dean had changed very little things there while she had been gone, so he knew exactly what she was seeing: the same creamy walls, the same couch and coffee table over the same carpet. The only sign that any time had passed at all inside of the house was the little girl on the couch. Emma slid down it and strode to stand right in front of Jo, her head tilted up as she watched her attentively.

“Hello,” she greeted.

“Hi, Emma!” Jo exclaimed, kneeling to talk to her face to face. “Look how tall you got! I haven’t seen you since you were like, yay high.”

Emma looked at the height Jo was signaling with clear skepticism, as if she didn’t believe that she was ever that little.

“I like your hair,” she commented.

“Thank you, I like yours. Those are very pretty braids.”

“My daddy made them,” Emma explained, pulling from one of them.

“Really?” Jo chuckled. “And where did your daddy learn to do that?”

“Internet video tutorials,” Dean explained, with a shrug. He was actually incredibly relieved that Emma was reacting so well to Jo’s presence after having been so cranky upstairs. “So… who wants ice cream?”

“I want ice cream!” Emma said.

“Me too,” Jo laughed. She stood up and took one step towards the door but she froze right where she was and looked down again. Emma had latched onto her hand and was staring up at her.

“What’s your favorite flavor?” she asked with a gravity that was almost comical, as if Jo’s reply would change the entirety of her opinion about her.

“Good question,” Jo said, and pretended to reflect very deeply about it, even going as far as stroking her chin. “I would say… chocolate. What’s yours?”

“Chocolate is good.” Emma nodded and led the way out for them.

That was actually the first question in a long interrogatory Emma had prepared for Jo. She also wanted to know what Jo's favorite color was, and what was her favorite meal, and how old she was, and where did she live.

"My Nana lives in California," she said, narrowing her eyes. "How come we never saw you there?"

"Well, California is a pretty big place," Jo explained, with a chuckle.

She seemed fascinated by Emma. She looked at her with bright eyes and answered all of her questions, even though Dean felt Emma was being far too insistent. When they needed to cross a street, Emma grabbed Jo's hand as well as Dean's and he had serious flashback of that last evening they had spent together.

It was so easy to fall back into that sense of familiarity. As if Jo had been there all that time and this was just something they did every day. Of course, it wasn't, as Emma reminded them when they finally reached the ice cream parlor and sat to share a banana split. She looked up at Jo, clutching her spoon on her hand as if it was a sort of weapon.

"What is it? You don't like it?" Dean asked, even though Emma hadn't really tried her ice cream at all.

"Why did you leave?" Emma blurted out. If Dean had been drinking something, he probably would have choked.

"Baby girl..."

"No, Dean, it's okay," Jo interrupted him. She rotated her body so she could face Emma and smiled at her. "I left because I wanted to be a singer and a good friend of mine gave me a chance to become one. It wasn't easy, because I missed my mom and I missed you and your dad, very much. But it was what I always wanted to do, do you understand?"

Emma stared at her for a moment longer before nodding very slowly. Dean had the impression she hadn't understood completely, but she appreciated Jo's honesty.

"Did you want to be a singer when you were little?" Emma asked.

"Yes, I always wanted to be a singer," Jo chuckled. "What do you want to be?"

Emma's eyes lit up again.

"A painter!" she exclaimed, but then her face dropped a little. "Will I have to go to California to become one?"

"I'm thinking maybe you'll have to go to New York," Jo said, only half joking.

"Yeah, let's not talk about that," Dean interrupted them. The terror in his face at the idea that his daughter would have to move so far away must have been clear in his face, because Jo laughed, but she dropped the topic.

After they finished the banana split (Dean could have sworn he barely touched it, Jo and Emma just ate a lot for being so short and tiny), they walked around the neighbor to digest it. Jo asked about Mr. Carrigan (who had passed away the year before and Mrs. Carrigan had moved with their son) and about Sid from Across the Street (his actual surname, as it turned out, was Robinson) and about Lisa and Ben.

"Ben is my friend!" Emma exclaimed enthusiastically. "He teached me to play soccer."

"Oh, that's so nice," Jo laughed. "Do you play with him a lot?"

"Yeah, in the park. The older kids sometimes laugh at him for being my friend, but he still plays with me."

"That is very nice of Ben. And what about Ben's mom, Lisa? Do you like her?"

"Yes. She's my dad's girlfriend."

Dean felt his entire face was on fire from the embarrassment.

"No, no, she's not... she's actually not," he stuttered when Jo looked at him with an eyebrow crooked. "She's my friend, but we're not like..."

"Yeah, that's what I said," Emma intervened, using a tone that meant _'Daddy, you're so stupid'_. "Lisa is your girl friend and Ben is my boy friend."

"Ah, I see," Jo chuckled. "And does your dad have any boy friends?"

"Yes! Uncle Benny and Uncle Cas are my daddy's boy friends," Emma continued explaining. "Uncle Sam can't be his boy friend, because he's his brother, but he is like a boy friend anyway."

"You are evil," Dean commented, but Jo was too busy roaring with laughter. It was a relief, however, to find out that Emma didn't actually know what a boyfriend or a girlfriend were yet.

They turned around the corner and the park was there. Jo stopped for a second to look around, almost as if she wanted to take it all in. There were kids playing in the warm afternoon, screaming and running around, and moms and sitters and some people with dogs sitting on the benches.

"That slope is new," Jo commented, pointing at it.

"Yeah, the neighborhood assembly decided to renew the games," Dean explained. "By the way, the indigestion that followed wasn't my fault and don't let anybody tell you otherwise."

Jo chuckled. Emma was insistently looking at the swings, but she seemed hesitant to ask if they could go to them.

"Are those still your favorite?" Jo asked her kindly.

"Yeah. But last time I went on them after having ice cream I puked a lot."

"That was because you went too fast," Dean reminded her. "If you just swing calmly, I'm sure it'll be fine."

"Daddy doesn't understand the point of the swings, does he?" Jo asked.

Emma grinned at her and shook her head.

It was getting late anyway. The sun was coming down and the moms were starting to call their kids to take them home. Emma clutched onto Jo's hand tight.

"Are you staying for dinner?"

"Oh, what are we having?"

"On Fridays, we eat mac and cheese," Emma explained.

"Yeah, I read that it was better to have a fixed menu, you know," Dean told Jo. "So kids know waht to expect. On Mondays we have veggies..."

"I don't like veggies," Emma intervened.

"But you have to eat them anyway, because they're good for your tummy," Dean sighed, not even wanting to go into the big veggie debate. Again.

They reached the house's fence and stayed right where they were, looking nervously at each other, as if they didn't know what else to say. Dean started talking really fast, trying to dissipate the same feeling of melancholy and loss that had invaded him two years ago when Jo had said goodbye, when they were standing right on that very same spot.

"You don't... you don't have to stay for dinner. I was really nice for you to come and I'm very glad we got to see you, but please don't feel obligated... I'm sure you want to go home to your mother, so you don't have to..."

"Dean," Jo cut him off. "I would love to stay for dinner."

And there was that.

It was oddly... fitting. Usually he made dinner with the door open so he could check on Emma while she consumed her allowed half hour of TV or drew on the coffee table. That day, she and Jo sat on the couch and Jo took out her cellphone and put on some music. Emma's face lit up immediately.

"My dad has this song!" she said, as _Here Comes the Sun_ started invading the room.

"Do you want to dance?"

"Yeah!"

Dean was almost so distracted watching them twirl and spin he almost burned the mac and cheese. Their light laughter and voices did something strange to him. Usually while he cooked, he was thinking about all the things he had to do the following day, his mind fixed on the day ahead and reviewing all the little things that still needed to be done, like buying new socks for Emma or clean up the bathroom or take the clothes to the Laundromat.

That day, all of those little details disappeared. There was only Emma and Jo, dancing barefoot on the carpet, looking so happy and so content...

It was how it was supposed to be, he realized. If Jo had stayed two years ago, if he had said what was really on his mind that day... but it wasn't even worth thinking about. Things weren't like that. He had to take care of Emma and Jo had her life and her career and it was just a stupid thing to think.

"Alright, who's ready for mac and cheese?" he called out.

They both cheered in unison and ran to help him put the table. It was a game for Emma: the glasses went there, the forks over here, the salt shaker right there. Dean had the impression she was trying really hard to get everything just right to impress the company. She was on her best behavior on the table: she didn't speak with her mouth full or put her elbows on the table. She talked about her friends at the kindergarten and how excited she was to start school very soon.

“They’re going to teach me to read. But I already know a bit ‘cause my dad teached me,” she declared with pride. “I can write my name. It’s an E, and two m’s and then a.”

“No way! That’s amazing,” Jo said. She sounded sincerely impressed.

Dean let dinner extend a little longer than he probably should have, way past Emma’s bed time. She was just so excited for her new friend and all the things she still had to tell her and ask her that it just didn’t seem fair to cut the reunion short. But after a while, Emma started rubbing her eyes and suppressing yawns and Dean knew that any second now she was going to become Cranky Emma and throw a fit for no apparent reason.

“Okay, baby girl, I think it’s time we put you to bed,” he declared.

“But I’m not tired,” she complained.

“Come on now.”

Emma reluctantly stood from the chair and so did Jo.

“I should probably go, too,” she said. “We’re travelling back tomorrow and I should be at the hotel…”

Dean didn’t think he was better at hiding his disappointment than Emma was.

“Can we visit you when we go to California?” she asked.

“Yes, of course,” Jo replied, kneeling right in front of her. “Just tell your dad to give me a call and we’ll go for a walk together, okay?”

“Okay!” Emma nodded, satisfied with that answer. She threw her arms around Jo’s neck and they held each other for several seconds. “Goodbye, Jo.”

“Goodbye, Emma,” Jo whispered.

“Go pick your pajamas,” Dean said and watched her climbed the stairs before turning to Jo. “Umh… do you have to go right now or can you stay for a cup of coffee? It’ll be just a minute…”

“I’d love to stay.”

Dean felt a little guilty for helping Emma out of her clothes so fast. But on the other hand, it had been a day full of excitement and she was yawning a lot. She didn’t even ask him to sing to her. Just sank on the bed, made sure Mr. Eight, Raggedy and Rosie were all with her and settled down on the pillow.

“Goodnight, daddy,” she muttered, her eyes fluttering close.

“Goodnight, little monster,” Dean replied with a smile. He stood up and was about to hit the lights when Emma asked another question:

“Daddy, is Jo your girl friend too?”

“Yeah,” Dean said, biting back a smile. “I would say she is.”

Emma reflected on that answer before settling back down again. “Good,” she muttered. A second later, she was fast asleep.

Dean tiptoed out of the room and climbed down the stairs. For a second, he seemed to have been transported to three years before, when he had just put Emma in her crib and walked down to have a chat with Jo. She was in the kitchen, just as she would have been, with her back turned to him as she manipulated the coffee maker. When he walked in, she turned towards whim with a smile.

“She’s so smart.”

“Yeah. Gets it after her mom,” he joked, because that was the joke he made whenever someone said something flattering about Emma. But as he leaned on the kitchen aisle to receive the cup of coffee, he realized that maybe for the first time in years, he didn’t feel like talking about Lydia.

Jo sipped from her cup in silence and so did he, enjoying the silence. She had put two spoons of sugar in his coffee, exactly the way he liked it. It marveled him that she remembered little details like that after so much time.

“So, any other girls who are your friend but not your girlfriend?” she asked, with a crooked eyebrow.

Dean almost choked in his coffee. Why was she asking something like that? Then again, he had tried to probe her to find out if she had any boyfriends, so perhaps it was fair.

“No. No, no, I just…” He changed the cup from one hand to another, uncomfortable. “You know, I… I did go out for dinner with Lisa. A couple of times,” he ended up admitting, clumsily. “But it just wasn’t… we worked better as friends. It wasn’t…”

“Meant?” Jo suggested.

“Yeah,” Dean sighed, glad that she had provided him with a way of escaping his own awkwardness. “It wasn’t meant.”

They stayed in silence while they both finished their coffee. Dean felt like he had to say something, anything at all, but he couldn’t find out what. And he realized, not surprisingly, he was trying to keep away the moment in which she would walk away again.

Jo seemed to be thinking the same thing. She left her cup on the sink and slowly turned to look at Dean.

“Don’t ghost me again,” she said. It was almost a plea. “Just… text me now and then. Send me a picture of Emma or… just keep in contact with me. You know I love that little girl. And you know I…” Her voice trailed off. She swallowed hard and she looked up at him. “Please?”

“Yes, of course,” Dean said, pushing his guilt down to force out a smile. “I’m sorry I was an ass.”

She smirked at him. And there was really nothing left for them to say.

“I should go.”

He walked her to the door as he had done hundreds of times. But her yellow Beetle wasn’t waiting for her outside and they both realized that too late. They looked at each other on the doorway and giggled. It was so easy to forget that any time had gone by at all.

“Let call me call you a taxi,” Dean mumbled.

“I can call a… yeah,” Jo said, at the exact same time. She chuckled again. “Or I could just walk to the corner and see if I get lucky.”

“Jo…” Dean started.

“I really don’t want to take up more of your time. I’m sure you’re tired…”

She took a step towards the door and Dean couldn’t take it. He couldn’t take the idea of her leaving again. Maybe that was why he stretched his hand and grabbed her arm, to physically keep her in place. Jo turned to look at him, wide eyed and with her lips slightly parted, shocked. Dean was about to let go, to apologize, but then she stepped back, spinning on her heels and somehow she ended up close to him, so close that he could feel the heat radiating from her body as they stare at each other face to face.

It was impossible to tell who started it. But suddenly his arm was around her waist, pulling her even closer and Jo was standing on the tip of her toes. Their lips met with ease, like magnets looking for each other, and Dean closed his eyes. It was gentle, hesitating at first, like asking a question, like trying to find out if it was alright… but then Jo put a hand on his cheek, her thumb slowly drawing circles on his skin, right before she nibbled his lower lip and broke away, looking at him with big dark eyes filled with doubt.

Dean kicked the door close and pushed Jo against the wall, squeezing against her tiny body, shudders going down his spine when she opened her mouth to him and their tongues stroke each other. His heart was beating so fast he feared it might burst and when he spoke, he was so out of breath it came out like a strangled whisper:

“Stay.”

Jo nodded and pulled him down for another kiss.


	19. Chapter 19

It was dark when Emma opened her eyes. That wasn’t a good thing. If it was dark, it meant it was still night and it meant that the Giant Spider in the closet was awake. If she realized Emma was awake as well, she could crawl out of there, her long little legs feeling in the dark, her pincers clicking and clacking, looking for something to eat…

Emma pulled the covers over her head and clutched Mr. Eight close to her chest, trying to keep herself from shivering. Daddy had told her the spider couldn’t hurt her, because it wasn’t real, but in moments like that, when it was dark and scary, it wasn’t easy to believe it. Perhaps the spider stopped existing when Daddy said so. He needed to come there. He needed to assure her that it wasn’t there, and then it really wouldn’t be there.

But calling unto him meant getting out of bed, crossing the dark bedroom (because she didn’t dare to stretch her hand and turn on the lights, lest the spider saw her) and the hallway until she reached his room. She was too short to reach the light switch, so the hallway would be dark as well and anything could sneak up on her. A burglar. Or a ghost. Or even the Spider.

Emma took a deep breath and tried to think. She could always shout, but that would alert the Spider. If Daddy didn’t wake up and came to the room fast enough, who knew what could happen? She couldn’t risk it. She had to think of a way to…

And that’s when it clicked on her. The radio. Her dad had left her the radio on the night table’s drawer. All she had to was take it out and called him on it.

She took a deep breath and slowly stuck out her arm from underneath the covers. The distance between her bed and the night table seemed like an abyss, but after a few agonizing seconds (her heart was racing so fast she could feel it thumping in her ears), her fingers latched onto the knob. She pulled with a little too much force and all the things she kept in there (her coloring pencils, her bouncing ball) rolled and rattled inside. Emma suffocated a gasp against her pillow as she felt up the inside, searching for the radio, expecting the clicking of enormous pincers to close over her arm at any second…

She found it and immediately slithered further underneath the covers. Her fingers were wet with sweat, but she still managed to push the big button on the side.

“Daddy?” she whispered. “Daddy, wake up!”

She received nothing but static and a horrible thought occurred to her. Maybe the Spider knew what she intended to do and had snatched her dad away…

A voice came through the radio, deep and slurry:

“What is it, Emma?”

“She’s back,” Emma informed him. She knew there was no need to add anything else. He knew what she meant.

“Okay, hold on. I’m on my way.”

Emma breathed out a sigh of relief and hugged her toys.

“He’s on his way, Rosie,” she muttered to her doll. “It’s going to be okay. She can’t get us.”

A few seconds later, the door creaked open and Daddy stumbled into the room. He turned on the lights and Emma emerged from the covers, blinking to get her eyes to adjust to the now luminous room.

“Hey, baby girl,” he said, with a yawn. “The Spider giving you grief again?”

“She wants to eat me.”

“Okay, then. Let’s take a look.” He walked towards the wardrobe and cracked the door open. Emma frowned as she realized something weird about her dad just a second before he moved away and showed her the inside of the wardrobe. There was nothing there but her clothes and her toy chest. “No Spider. Told you, Emma, she isn’t real. She can’t harm you.”

“But what if she’s real when it’s dark?” Emma insisted. “What if she’s real when you’re not here?”

Daddy opened his mouth as if he was going to argue that, but in the end, Emma must have somewhat right, because he didn’t.

“Right. Hold on.”

He left the room for a few minutes and when he came back, he had a blue water sprayer with transparent liquid with him.

“This is monster repellant,” he explained, as he handed it to her. “If I turn off the light and the spider returns, you can spray her with it and she will go away, I promise.”

“It looks like water.”

“Well, if you don’t want it…”

“No!” Emma extended her hands towards him. “I’ll keep it!”

“Very well,” Daddy said, with a smile. He ruffled her hair and kissed her in the forehead. “Get back to sleep.”

Emma settled back down against the pillows, but the thing that had caught her curiosity was still there.

“Daddy?” she called when he was near the door. “Why aren’t you wearing your pajama shirt?”

Daddy looked down at himself, as if he only now realized it.

“Because, well… it’s hot. And I was hot, so I… I took it off.”

Emma nodded. That made sense.

“Okay. Goodnight, daddy.”

“Night, Emma.”

He hit the lights off and closed the door very slowly, behind him. Emma breathing in deeply and laid down, holding onto the monster repellent. The Spider must have heard she had it, because she didn’t bother her again that night.

 

* * *

 

Dean stayed outside of Emma’s door for a moment or two, listening in. But the “monster repellent” must have worked, because there was nothing but silence, so finally, he turned off the hallway’s light as well and went back into his room.

The tiny body resting on the side of the bed rolled over towards him when he slid underneath the sheets again.

“She okay?”

“Yeah. It was just the monster in her closet,” Dean explained, leaving the walkie-talkie on the night table in case Emma called him again. He laid his head on the pillow and looked at Jo’s face, just inches away from his. “Hello,” he said.

“Hi,” she replied with a groggy smile. She was wearing the top of his pajama, probably snatched it when he had fumbled around for the pants in the dark. She was so short that it was almost like a nightgown for her. She stretched her hand and touched his face again. “So… that happened.”

Dean kissed the inside of her palm, not entirely sure what to answer to that. It wasn’t like he had planned it. Since Lydia’s death, he hadn’t been with another woman and he always thought that when it finally happened (if it happened at all) it would be… difficult, somehow. That he would start crying and wouldn’t be able to go through with it. And afterwards, he expected to feel guilty, like he had disrespected his wife memory for allowing himself to be with someone else.

None of that had happened. When he had grabbed Jo by the hand and led her upstairs, when they started taking off each other’s clothes and stumbled on the bed together, there was never a doubt in his mind that he wanted this, that he had wanted it for a very, very long time. That it was right, that if it had to happen, of course it would happen with Jo.

And if Dean felt guilty right now, it was for different reasons.

“You want to know something funny?” she asked. “I totally had a crush on you when I was working here.”

She chuckled as if it was a joke, but Dean failed to find the humor on it. He still smiled at her and lassoed her waist to pull her closer to him.

“Could have fooled me,” he commented, tangling his fingers in her hair. “What, with Denim Jacket hanging around you…”

“He was a great guy,” Jo replied, playfully punching him in the bicep. “There’s no law against dating someone else if your crush on your boss is hopeless and nothing will come of it, you know?”

“Something did come of it.”

“Years later,” she pointed out. “What’s with your animosity towards poor Alfie anyway? Were you jealous or something?”

“Is this your not-so-subtle way of asking me if I was crushing back?” Dean asked.

Instead of facing her eyes while asking that, he sank his face on her neck and left a kiss right underneath her ear. He liked having her there. He liked touching her and kissing her, perhaps to make sure it wasn’t a dream.

Jo wasn’t distracted by his affection, which would have been a little insulting if her next question hadn’t been:

“Well… were you?”

And there it was. The guilt.

But maybe one way of getting rid of it would be to admit to some things he wouldn’t have before.

“No, I wasn’t crushing on you,” he said, raising his head to look at her. “I was in love with you.”

Jo’s eyes went wider. She took a deep breath and kept staring at him, almost as if she expected him to start laughing or tell her he wasn’t serious about that. But now that Dean had decided to come clean, there was no way he was backing down.

“I realized it after you left. I had been... feeling… things,” he said, completely sure that wasn’t the best way to explain it. “And I thought it was because I was lonely, because I missed having someone. And then you weren’t there and I tried dating Lisa and… it wasn’t that. Lisa is wonderful, but she wasn’t you.”

“Same deal, then,” Jo muttered. “Samandriel wasn’t you. No one was.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck and for the longest time, they just held each other. Dean closed his eyes, trying to burn the scent of her perfume and her sweat and the texture of her hair underneath his fingers in his memory. He had the terrible impression it would be the first and last time he had the chance to do that.

When Jo spoke again, her voice came almost broken:

“I should have said something.”

“No,” Dean shook his head and pressed his lips against her temple. “If you had, I would have asked you to stay then. And neither of us was ready for that. You were figuring yourself out, and I was… I was still aching.”

“And now?”

Dean moved away a little to brush her hair aside and tried to smile despite the dark thought plaguing him.

“A lot has changed.”

Jo’s eyes scanned his face, as if she was trying to determine what exactly he meant by that. After a moment, she nodded and snuggled against his chest again. They stayed there for a very long time. Dean knew she wasn’t sleeping, her breathing wasn’t deep enough for that. He toyed with her hair distractedly, trying to ignore the sword that hanged over their heads, but of course, there was no way they could do that forever.

“What happens now?” Jo asked finally, in a whisper. It sounded like she was just as scared of the answer as Emma was of the Spider in her closet. “With you and me, with… this, I mean. What happens now?”

Dean breathed in slowly. There it was. The reason guilt was drowning him. Three years before he had kept quiet because he wanted Jo to have her own life, he wanted her to succeed and not get trapped there with him. A lot had changed, but that hadn’t. He didn’t want to think about that, so he refused to.

“Let’s just… let’s talk about that in the morning, okay?” he proposed. “Let’s just not think about that right now.”

For a second, he was also scared. He was scared Jo would say he couldn’t open up about his feelings like that and then not discuss them at all, he couldn’t bring her into his bed and then refused to talk about the future with her. But he might have underestimated how terrified Jo was as well, because she only muttered:

“Okay.”

And then, as if she wanted to distract him or to distract herself from what it all meant, she left a kiss on his jaw, quick and light, and then looked at him with pure hesitation.

Dean didn’t feel any. He pulled her up to him and kissed her again, open-mouthed and desperate. Their legs tangled together underneath the sheets and they didn’t think about anything else for that night.

 

* * *

 

Jo woke up to an empty bed and an empty room, although she could have sworn she felt a kiss ghosting over her cheek just a moment before, while she was floating in that place between sleep and consciousness. Her clothes were still spread on the floor, mixed up with Dean’s. Just the idea of having to get up and pick them up, of having to leave that warm, soft bed that smelled like _him_ , made her want to bury her face in the pillows and snatch a couple more hours of sleep. Postpone having to face the real world and everything it entailed for a little bit longer.

But she couldn’t do that forever.

With a sigh, she stood up and tiptoed past Emma’s room and into the bathroom. The last thing they needed right now was for her to wake up and see her there, wearing nothing but her father’s pajama tops. Jo could probably come up with an excuse, but in the long run, Emma was a smart girl. She would demand to know what was going on. And Jo couldn’t answer that question to herself, much less to Emma.

She spent a long time looking at herself in the mirror. She felt different, somehow, a bit like the morning after losing her virginity and she didn’t know why, because the experiences couldn’t have been more different. Dean had been kind and patient and careful, almost as if he thought she was going to break underneath his touch. Nothing like any other boy or man that Jo had ever been with, nothing like she had imagined he would be. And now she felt strange and tired and a little melancholic. Like she was coming to the realization that something had shifted permanently, like nothing would ever be the same again.

But she didn’t regret it. Not what she had done, nor what she had said. Not for a second. No matter what happened when she stepped out of the bathroom, when she walked out of that house, she wouldn’t ever regret it.

And armed with that certainty, she finished getting dressed and went downstairs.

Dean was in the kitchen, manipulating the coffee maker and the toaster at the same time. He was wearing his pajama pants and a grey old shirt and Jo was reminded immediately of the aspect he’d had the day she had last been there before moving to California. He had been so distressed about getting Emma ready he had forgotten to dress himself.

The memory made her chuckle and Dean turned around to look at her. His hair was ruffled and there was stubble growing on his cheeks. For some reasons, his freckles were even more obvious in that early Saturday morning light.

“Hey,” he muttered, with a groggy smile.

“Good morning,” Jo replied, smiling right back at him. “What’s on the menu for breakfast?”

“Well, missy, we have our coffee black and scalding and our toasts crispy and golden,” he replied, faking a terrible Southern accent that made her laugh again. “Would you like jam and butter with that?”

“I would love that. Thank you, kind sir.”

Dean placed the mugs and plates in front of her in the kitchen isle and they sat face to face on the stools. His smile had faltered a little and when he spoke again, Jo understood why:

“So, umh… I called you a taxi. They said they have a forty minute delay, so you can just… eat in peace.”

“Oh,” Jo said. And there it was, reality just fucking seeping into the peace she had felt a second before. Still, she pushed down the knot that had formed in her stomach and forced out another smile. “Who even calls taxis anymore? Don’t you have an Uber app in your phone or something?”

“What can I say? I’m old-fashioned,” Dean replied, rolling his eyes.

“More like old, period.”

Dean let out an offended gasp and Jo giggled at him. It was the last moment they could pretend everything would be alright. Dean lowered his eyes and started babbling:

“Listen, I don’t want you to feel like I’m kicking you out or anything like that.”

“Dean…”

“It’s just I don’t want Emma to wake up and see us and start asking questions.”

“Dean…”

“Kids are like, very smart these days. Honestly I blame TV shows and…”

Jo put a hand over Dean’s arm and he went quiet right away.

“It’s okay,” she told him when he turned to look her in the eye. “I understand. It’s… it’s complicated.”

Dean sighed, but his posture didn’t relax at all.

“I guess that’s one way to put it.”

They couldn’t postpone it any longer.

“So what’s going to happen now?” Jo said, repeating the same question they had refused to answer the night before. “Are we… going to be a thing or just…?”

Her voice trailed off. She didn’t dare to finish, because if he told her that it had been just something that was on his list of things to do, something he just never wanted to repeat again, she didn’t think she could handle that. Because it had been so much more for her.

Dean rubbed his eyes as if he was suffering from an intense headache. Jo could relate.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I think… I want us to be. I’ve wanted it for so long, really. And now you’re here again and I don’t want you to go. But I know you’re going to anyway.”

Jo closed her eyes. Yes, there was that little problem of him and Emma being here and her being all the way over there in California. When she wasn’t all over the country with her band like Dorothy intended them to be.

“Why couldn’t I have wanted something a little closer to home, huh?” she asked and to her relief, Dean chuckled quietly. Jo slid her hand down until she found his and intertwined her fingers with his. She squeezed tight and look at his eyes, trying to find something that would offer some sort of closure or solution into all that green. “We can still… I meant it when I said I wanted you and Emma in my life again. We can still call and text and all of that. And whenever I’m in town, we can get together and… do this all over again. Minus all this angst right now.”

Dean let out a sound that she supposed was meant to be a laugh.

“Yeah. I’d like that.”

It wasn’t enough. They both knew it wasn’t enough and eventually it would be too little. It already felt like too little. But it was the most they could do and compared to the absolute nothing they’d had before, they were willing to take it and hold onto to it with both hands.

They had breakfast in silence, but Jo was hyperaware of the fact they were still holding hands all throughout, Dean’s thumb drawing circles into hers. They stole glances at each other and smiled, smiled like she wasn’t leaving in a few minutes. She offered to wash the dishes with him and they stood side by side in front of the sink, their arms almost brushing as they moved to wash the mugs and the plates. It was strangely domestic. Oddly fitting. Like this was a thing they did every day and they would do the following day as well.

The taxi arrived five minutes later to shatter that last illusion.

It stood just at the other side of the fence, with the motor purring and the driver glaring at them as if he thought they were making him waste his time. And maybe they were, because they stood right on the doorway, neither of them willing to say goodbye once more.

“Well…” Dean started.

“I’m having dinner tonight with mom and Bobby,” Jo said. “And then I’m leaving tomorrow. I’ll call you when I get back to California.”

“Yeah, please do. I don’t trust planes.”

Jo chuckled. The taxi driver honked at them, impatiently.

She stood on the tip of her toes to give him a kiss. Dean put a hand on her cheek and wrapped his other arm around her and pulled her closer to him. He tasted like coffee and his hands smelled like soap and Jo took those sensations with her when she climbed down the porch stairs and crossed the garden, not daring to look over her shoulder. But she would remember that smell, that taste, and she would always be brought back to that early Saturday morning. To home.

She slid on the passenger seat and closed the door. The driver didn’t even give her time to look out of the window and wave at Dean before he bolted down the street. In retrospect, that was a blessing, because she didn’t want him to see the tears selling up in her eyes.

 

* * *

 

The days that followed Jo’s departure were… odd. Dean did everything he always did: he went to work, he took Emma to the kindergarten, he talked to Sam and the daycare moms. Everything went back to its usual daily routine and if he hadn’t known it happened, if he hadn’t had the few scratches Jo left on his shoulder and the smell of her shampoo in the pillow on the other side of the bed, he wouldn’t have known it had been real.

And that was just the thing. It was as if a natural disaster, an earthquake or a powerful storm, had come and gone and he was the only person who had noticed it. He was doing the groceries with Emma or talking to Miss Pond or arranging meetings over the phone and all he wanted to do was grab the nearest person by the shoulder, shake them and scream at them: “I love her. Do you understand that? I didn’t think that was possible, but I’m in love with this girl and she’s far away and we don’t know if it’s going to work or what are we going to do!”

Of course that was a surefire way of getting himself fired or committed or have his daughter’s custody taken from him. So he resisted the urge the best he could, but it was almost as if that secret was bubbling inside of him and he had no one to tell it to.

So on Monday he was distracted and looking at the time, trying to figure out where Jo would be right at that moment. She said she would be leaving in the morning and according to the flights he could find between Kansas and Los Angeles, that either meant she was leaving her hotel or already at the airport. Yes, he had googled it. Yes, he realized it was a little bit creepy. No, he couldn’t bring himself to really care.

In retrospective, though, he should have done it from his computer at home or from his phone, because Zachariah Adler was a paranoid son of a bitch that monitored all of his employees¡ searches, even top dogs like Dean.

“Mr. Winchester, Mr. Adler is here to see you,” the voice in the intercom announced.

Dean looked down at frown. He had spent the morning only half-concentrated in a sales report, but it wasn’t due until Wednesday, so he could have the luxury of slacking a little bit. Why did Zachariah wanted to see him now? They didn’t have an appointment and even if they did, he wouldn’t have scheduled it so close to lunch time.

But of course, you couldn’t turn the CEO away just because you didn’t have one and he didn’t want Adler leering at his secretary for long either.

“Send him in, Cecily.”

Zachariah strutted inside in his impeccable suit and tie, with his usual grin of confidence.

“Hello, Dean, how was your weekend?”

Zachariah was probably the last person on earth Dean would want to talk to about his personal life, so he simpered at him and shrugged.

“Same old.” He stood up to walk up to him and they did the awkward handshake and condescending pat dance. “Just spending some time with my kid, you know?”

“Ah, yes, Emily,” Zachariah said, even though Dean had told him thousands that wasn’t her name. “How old is she? Four?”

“Five,” Dean corrected him, still forcing himself to be totally agreeable with him as he guided him to the armchairs in the corner. The advantages of having a nice office was that one could always invite their overbearing boss to sit away from their work desk and prevent him from seeing what he was doing. He offered him some cucumber water that Zachariah rejected and with those formalities out of the way, Dean sat in front of him and stopped dithering around: “So… what brings you here?”

“Oh, I just thought it would be a good idea to come check on my favorite associate,” Zachariah said, still in that relaxed tone of him. Dean didn’t believe him for a second that this was just a social visit, but he kept smiling on. “So, how is life?”

“Life is… good. Very good,” Dean said, nodding. “I’ve got the report almost ready…”

“That’s great,” Zachariah interrupted him so abruptly Dean had the impression he hadn’t even heard a word he said. “So you’re happy here, aren’t you?”

“Well, yes, of course,” Dean said, carefully. He wasn’t ‘exulting’ or ‘passionate’ about ad sales, but he got paid well and it put food on the table. He really couldn’t ask for much more.

“Good, good. You’re by any chance planning on visiting California?”

That took Dean by surprise. How the hell did Zachariah know his mind was halfway across the country?

“Uh, yeah, I visit California at least twice a year,” Dean said, frowning. “My daughter’s grandmother lives there.”

Zachariah clicked his tongue, as if that wasn’t the answer he was expecting.

“Dean, let me be straight with you. The board is thinking about… uh, how to put it? Moving some valuable assents to our offices on the West Coast.”

Dean waited for Zachariah to continue, but it seemed like he was waiting for his response now.

“Okay…?”

“I know, right?” Zachariah said, rolling his eyes as if Dean had agreed with whatever his opinion was. “Why would they even want to do that? They say it’s about broadening the business’ horizons and trying our hand at other marketing business like movies and music and all that jazz. But business is good right now, isn’t it?”

“Business is… stable,” Dean admitted. That wasn’t exactly the same thing, but Zachariah took it as if Dean was agreeing.

“So all of this is unnecessary,” Zachariah said, shaking his head. “Honestly, I don’t want to sound paranoid, but I feel like they’re punishing me for that whole ugly business with the intern.”

Dean was pretty sure anyone could tell his smile was tenser than ever. He was biting his tongue very hard not to remind Zachariah that “the ugly business with the intern” almost cost the company a sexual harassment lawsuit and that he had brought it upon himself. But Zachariah was just looking for someone to unload his problems unto and Dean, having learnt early on it was better to suck up to him and be quiet, was the perfect shoulder to cry on.

“Well, we’ll just have to see how it turns out,” he said, without compromising himself.

“You wouldn’t happen to be thinking about moving over there, would you?” Zachariah added, narrowing his beady little eyes at Dean.

And there it was: the real reason Zachariah had come to his office. He was dealing with a board that was rebelling against him and he feared his employees might start jumping ship. He needed to be reassured.

“Nah, I don’t think so,” he said, shrugging so he wouldn’t look like it was all that important. “I mean, I’m stuck here with a mortgage for the next ten years. Where am I gonna move?”

“Good, good,” Zachariah nodded and breathed out slowly. “You’re a smart man, Dean Winchester.”

And that was pretty much it. He tried to continue with the sales report but now neither his heart nor his mind was in it. He informed Cecily he was going out for lunch and crossed the street to buy himself a latte and a sandwich in the coffee shop in front of the office building. He sat on a corner table, watching the people passing by and thinking.

In Zachariah’s Adler world, what had happened had been the equivalent of a full freak out complete with yelling and stomping. Dean hadn’t heard anything about this “moving assets to the West Coast” thing and he was pretty sure that if it was a board decision, he probably should forget that conversation ever happened. On the other hand, what was he going to do with that information? March into the office of one of the board’s member behind Zachariah’s back and ask them to be moved to California? Perhaps with a corner office and a better salary? It would be completely ridiculous.

Except… would it? He wasn’t exactly low on the corporate ladder and he still had place to move up. The only reason he hadn’t sought a promotion was because he was fine just where he was. A higher position would mean more working hours and he already felt guilty for spending so much time away from Emma. But then again, Emma was going to start school soon. He couldn’t just move her. She was going to need a bunch of new things. Perhaps she would want to go to ballet or take up some instrument or…

Dean smoothed out the sandwich wrapper only to crumple it again. Emma was fine. She was growing. She didn’t need him as much as she had when she was a small baby. She still needed him to make sure there was no monstrous spiders in her closet, of course, but he didn’t have to worry about her well-being twenty four seven. Not that he ever stopped doing that, it was just… she needed him in a different way and that was good. That was healthy. That was how it was supposed to be. She was supposed to go to school and make friends and have a favorite teacher and all those things. She still was a kid. If he told her they were going to live closer to Nana and the sea, she would jump on the chance with all her usual enthusiasm.

No, Emma would be fine either way. That wasn’t the reason he was thinking about this. He needed to be honest with himself. The reason his radars were up and pinging about this possibility was because it meant he would be closer to Jo. And maybe things wouldn’t be as complicated then. And maybe they could…

Dean realized he had been tearing the wrapper into small pieces and making a mess in his table. He gathered it all up and stuffed it into the empty coffee cup. He was in his mid-thirties, he had a daughter and like he’d said to Zachariah, a mortgage to pay. He couldn’t make that sort of decision because of a girl that was nine years younger than him, a girl he’d had a one night stand with and then not even defined what they were supposed to be afterwards.

Except that girl was Jo. And when he factored in that, it didn’t seem ridiculous or difficult or stupid. It seemed like one of the easiest decisions he could make in his life.

 

* * *

 

Emma pushed the broccoli to the side of her plate and pouted.

“I got all night, baby girl,” Dean shrugged, amused.

He knew what she was doing. After he realized screaming and throwing a tantrum wasn’t going to work, she had started a path of passive resistance. She was trying to hem and haw and drag her feet to stretch this late into her bed time. That way, he would send her to sleep and she wouldn’t have to eat the broccoli. He was ashamed to admit that the tactic had worked before, but maybe tonight would be the night they would put the big veggie debate at rest once and for all.

He wasn’t going to apologize for being hopelessly optimistic.

“Why can’t we have mac and cheese every night?” Emma complained.

“Because if you had mac and cheese every night, you’d never grow up,” Dean explained, for what had to the hundredth time. “And you’d be short forever.”

He hoped that argument would last. Eventually, Emma was going to realize she was the tallest in the class and that whole “veggies prevent you from being short” wasn’t scientifically accurate. Still, he was going to use it and abuse it for as long as he could, and then when Emma turned out to be really tall, he would say “See? That’s ‘cause you ate the veggies”. Yes, sometimes fatherhood was about winning a petty argument.

Emma picked up one of the broccolis and stuffed into her mouth with a face of pure martyrdom. She chewed and swallowed, containing a heave and put her fork down as if she had just defeated the Girl-Eating Spider singlehandedly.

“You still have one left.”

Emma scoffed, as if to say ‘ _You can’t expect me to eat all of them!_ ’, but before they could open that can of worms, Dean’s phone rang. As a rule, he didn’t take calls or messages while they were having dinner, but they should have finished having dinner half an hour ago. And besides, the moment he saw the caller’s I.D., he simply knew he couldn’t put it down.

Jo’s face appeared on his screen, beaming wide.

“Hi!”

“Hey,” Dean said, his heart racing a little faster just to see her. “How was your flight?”

“Is that Jo?” Emma asked, her eyes lighting up. She got up from the chair and jumped when Dean held the phone higher and out of her reach. “Let me talk to her!”

“Emma would certainly like to talk to you,” Dean said, turning his body around so Emma couldn’t look at the screen. “But I’m afraid she hasn’t finished her dinner, and we don’t take calls until after we’ve finished our dinners, so…”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Jo said, raising her voice a little. “I really wanted to talk to her too, but if those are the rules, then there’s nothing we can do.”

Emma huffed, returned to her place and shoved the last broccoli into her mouth while Dean and Jo made exaggeratedly small talk about the weather. When she finished swallowing it, Emma angrily marched up to her dad and demanded to talk to Jo. Dean picked her up to sit her in her lap and finally lowered the phone so they could see each other.

“Hi, Emma! Did you finish your dinner?”

“It was broccoli,” Emma complained.

“And next week we’re having your favorite: Brussels sprouts!”

Emma pretended to vomit and Jo laughed out loud. Emma chattered excitedly about a game she and her friends had played that day and asked if Jo had been to the beach that day (in her mind, it was impossible that someone lived in California and didn’t go to the beach every single day. Yes, even in the middle of winter). Jo told them how their plane had some delays and they had only got home right at that moment. Her friends were on the living room ordering a pizza.

“How come she can eat pizza on a Monday?” Emma said, squinting at her dad as if she thought she was getting played somehow.

“Because Jo is an adult, sweetie,” Dean explained. “And besides, she’s not growing anymore so it’s no use for her to eat veggies”

“Are you calling me short?” Jo protested. She comically berated him while Dean tried to humbly apologize while Emma giggled at them both.

It was a magical moment.

“Hey, why are you even up?” Jo asked, frowning at Emma. “Isn’t it your bed time?”

“Yes, yes it is,” Dean said, thankful, because he was having so much fun talking to the both of them that he had completely missed that. “Say goodnight to Jo and go put your pajamas.”

“Okay,” Emma sighed, disappointed. “Are you going to call us tomorrow too?”

“Yes, definitely,” Jo promised her with a smile. “Goodnight, Emma.”

Emma did something Dean hadn’t seen her done in a while: she kissed her fingertips and then placed them over the screen to send Jo a kiss. Then she jumped down from Dean’s knees and happily went upstairs humming to herself.

“Oh, my God, she’s adorable.”

“I know,” Dean agreed, with a grin. They fell in complete silence for a few seconds, like they didn’t know how to face each other now that Emma was gone. “Uh, can you stay while I put her to rest and wash the dishes? ‘Cause I’d really like to…”

“They’re not going to leave any pizza for me. They’re like piranhas.”

Dean tried his best to keep his disappointment from showing in his face.

“Yes, of course, I totally get that…”

“I'll call back in a while,” Jo suggested. “That way we can really… talk.”

Dean didn’t think he had ever gone through his nightly routine faster. He read “The Lorax” to Emma, but she complained because he didn’t do any of the voices, so he started again and this time he put on a full on performance for her. He kissed her in the forehead and it wasn’t until he had already switched the lights off and walked away that he realized he’d forgotten to ask her if she’d brushed her teeth. He half-heartedly did the dishes and flew upstairs for his shower. Once he was alone in his room, he toyed with his cellphone for another five minutes before it rang again.

Jo had changed into a sleeveless pajama top that showed the better part of her neck and her shoulders.

“Uh, sexy,” Dean joked.

“Glad you think you so. I didn’t put it on for you,” she replied and Dean pretended to be greatly offended by that, clutching his neck where his hypothetical pearls would be. Jo chuckled. “We’re having another heat wave.”

“That sounds fun,” Dean commented as he laid down against the pillows, holding his phone right in front of him. “And by fun I mean it sucks.”

“It’s not even summer! I think human beings are defying God by coming here. No one was really supposed to live in this dessert.”

Dean chuckled and relaxed. The awkwardness from before was completely gone again and he was ever so happy that they could be there, just talking to each other.

“So, how was your day?”


	20. Chapter 20

Visiting Castiel and Meg was rapidly becoming one of Emma’s favorite summer activities for one simple reason.

“Hi, Mr. Winchester,” Claire greeted them when she opened the door. “Hi, Emma.”

“Hi, Claire.”

The two girls immediately held hands and waltzed inside and towards Claire’s room, chattering about something that Dean didn’t quite catch. Probably not meant for him either.

“Heya, squirrel,” Meg greeted him when he advanced unto the living room. “What would you like to drink? We have soda, and juice… and water. Yeah, that’s pretty much it.”

“Ignore her,” Castiel suggested. He walked up to Dean and gave him a quick hug. “She thinks we’re being too sensitive, but I’d rather err on the side of caution.”

“And I would rather have a beer,” Meg complained. “I mean, he isn’t even here yet.”

“Good to know we can count on the professional nurse to be aware of our health issues,” Dean pointed out.

Meg let out a humorless, sarcastic laugh and stuck Dean with a glass of water before announcing she was going into the kitchen to see how dinner was coming along.

Dean and Castiel didn’t even have time to sit down, because Sam and Jess arrived not five minutes later. Mary still wasn’t walking, but she could stand up straight if she clang onto chairs and people, hesitating on her short, chubby legs before taking every step.

“Hey, baby,” Dean greeted her when she stood with both hands on the coffee table and looked up at her uncle. “How’s life treating you?”

Of course that was the cue for Sam and Jess to start numbering everything Mary had accomplished that week.

“She’s finally sleeping through the night…”

“Although she does wake up at dawn.”

“… and she’s learning to build towers and put the shapes in the correct hole in the box,” Jess continued. “She’s not much of a talker right now, but we’re pretty sure…”

“That’s great, you guys,” Dean said, picking Mary up and sitting her on his knees. He ruffled her hair and Mary stared at him with big brown eyes. She had a mole right between her eyebrows just like Jess did and she was so adorable that Dean couldn’t understand how did Sam and Jess function as people when they had this baby they could cuddle all day. Then again, Emma was extremely cute as well and he managed.

The doorbell rang again and all the rambling and reflecting about babies stopped right away. Castiel left his glass on the coffee table and smoothed out his trousers for invisible creases.

“Act natural,” he reminded them.

Of course he was the first to blow it when he opened the door.

“Hey, Benny,” he said, with the smile and tone that you would give a child that had just fallen off the bike and you were trying to prevent them from crying. “You look good.”

Benny stared at him with somber eyes. He actually looked like someone had just bashed him in the head with a bat in a dark alley and stolen his wallet, and Dean was pretty sure no one knew that better that Benny himself. So before Castiel could make another awkward comment, he stood up and hugged his friend, patting him in the back to invite him in. Balthazar, Benny’s sponsor, followed right behind him.

“Oh, hi, Balthazar,” Jess greeted him, immediately standing up and putting on a radiant smile for him.

“Balthazar?” Meg asked and emerged from the kitchen with a platter full of beverages, also smiling wide. “How are you? Have a drink, please.”

“That is so very kind of you,” Balthazar said, exaggerating his thick British accent even more. “You ladies are always so delightful.”

Dean was ninety percent sure that Meg and Jess acted like that in front of Balthazar not because he was a handsome older British guy with grey hair and charm, but because they had decided it was fun to irritate their husbands. And judging by Sam and Castiel’s groans of irritation, it was working just fine for them.

Benny sat down on the couch and looked at the glass Meg had given him as if he didn’t know what to do with it. Everybody went quiet for a second, waiting for him to say something.

“Well… it’s over,” he muttered, finally. His shoulders were slumped and Dean had never in his life seen him so defeated. “We’re divorced. Andrea keeps the restaurant and I keep… the photo albums, I guess.”

“Man, that’s… that’s rough,” Sam said, pretty clumsily.

“And how are you feeling, tough guy?” Dean asked, putting a hand on his shoulder so he would know he wasn’t alone.

“To be perfectly honest with you, I really want a drink.”

There was a moment of tense silence in the living room and then Meg (because of course it was Meg) snickered quietly. Benny beamed at her and that gave them the signal that it was okay to laugh at the comment.

“Ah, but don’t give in, dear,” Balthazar recommended. He was perched on the couch’s armrest and somehow making it seem like it was a throne. “We’ve been working hard towards that one year chip. It’s gonna be grand.”

“If you say so,” Benny sighed.

“What say you, Balthazar?” Meg asked. “Should I put another plate on the table?”

“As much as I would love to enjoy your homemade dinner, darling, I have a compromise elsewhere.” Balthazar finished his drink and left the glass on the coffee table. “But maybe if you insist…”

“We wouldn’t want to keep you,” Sam said immediately.

“It’s a shame, but maybe some other time,” Castiel added. “Let me walk you to the door.”

Jess and Meg exchanged a look and giggled.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” Meg announced as her husband ushered Balthazar away. “Dean, be useful for once and go call the girls, will you?”

“I’m useful!” Dean protested as Meg walked back into the kitchen without even acknowledging him. “You’re the one who’s… ugh.”

He put Mary back in Sam’s arms and climbed the stairs, muttering to himself and still trying to find a good comeback to Meg’s comment.

The door of Claire’s room was slightly ajar and Dean caught a trace of the conversation inside before he could knock.

“So she’s going to be your new mommy?”

“No, silly, she’s just my dad’s girl friend.”

“Well, yeah, that’s what I… doesn’t matter,” Claire concluded. “You wanna see another one?”

“Yeah!”

Dean knocked slightly and popped his head inside. The girls were in Claire’s bed, with a big book open over their knees. Before he could tell them dinner was ready, Emma jumped happily and lifted the book for Dean to see.

“Look, Daddy, it’s an encycli… encycla…”

“Encyclopedia,” Claire helped her.

“Yes! And it’s about bugs!” she explained, as she pointed to illustrations full of beetles and other disgusting little critters.

“That’s nice, sweetie,” Dean said, making a mental note to talk to Castiel about his daughter’s hobbies. “Uh, Aunt Meg says dinner’s ready, so… put that back.”

Emma gave the book to Claire, who proceeded to very carefully place it back on her shelf while the younger girl kept talking all the way into the dining room:

“Spiders eat bugs and Claire tells me that I can learn to draw them. That way I can leave the drawings out and the Giant Spider will try to eat them instead of me.”

“That’s… that’s pretty clever,” Dean admitted. Claire showed him a very smug smirk that looked eerily like Meg’s. Dean was also going to have to talk to Castiel about that.

But not right then. The girls sat on the children’s table next to them while the adults ate the perfectly cooked meat and potatoes and talked about their boring adult lives. Everybody wanted to know how Benny was, of course, but after stating over and over he was fine and that he hadn’t really talked that much to Andrea, they dropped the topic and heard all about how the pharmaceutical company Jess worked for was implementing a new system to catch salesmen who gave free samples a little too liberally. No one could believe how a topic so sordid ended up being so hilarious as well. Since they were in the topic of new company policies, Dean mentioned the whole “assets moving to California” and Zachariah’s paranoid ramblings.

The laughter on the table didn’t last as long as he had hoped and suddenly all eyes were on him.

“What?” Dean asked, moving his head to one side and the other.

“You’re not…? They’re not moving you, right?” Sam asked, frowning slightly.

“No, of course not. That’d be ridiculous.”

A quick scan around the table indicated that he had spoken far too loud and far too fast for it to believable. Even Claire and Emma had raised their heads and were looking at them with curiosity.

“Why would I even want to move?” Dean continued. “I’m perfectly fine just exactly where I am.”

“So that means if you asked them to move you, they would?” Jess asked.

“I don’t know. Why would I even ask that, anyway?”

“So you don’t want to move to California with your pretty young girlfriend?” Meg asked.

The mocking tone in her voice stung worse than Dean expected it to.

“You’re not supposed to know that,” he said. It took him an entire second to realize that was the most incriminating thing he could have possibly say. “I mean… I don’t know what you’re talking about. Did you tell her?” he asked, turning to his brother, because he had been the only one Dean had mentioned to he was in contact with Jo again.

“I told Cas,” Sam confessed.

“I’m sorry, was it supposed to be a secret?” Castiel asked, frowning as he did when there was something confusing going on.

“Yes. I mean, no!” Dean groaned. “It’s not like that.”

“Okay, backtrack,” Benny intervened. “I’ve been so busy dealing with my personal bull… crap-” He quickly corrected himself when all the parents in the table glared at him “-that I hadn’t even heard anything about this. Does Dean have a girlfriend?”

“No, I don’t…”

“Remember that girl that used to babysit Emma and sang at our wedding?” Jess interrupted him. “Well, she rolled back to town a couple of weeks ago and she and Dean… reconnected.”

Dean was ever so glad that he hadn’t related to Sam the detail of their “reconnection” because like hell he was having his sex life discussed out in the open the way his love life was being right now.

“Nice one, chief.” Benny patted him on the back so hard that Dean almost smashed his face on the table. “Maybe there’s hope for my ass after all.”

“It’s not like that!” Dean insisted, pathetically. “We just had a nice friendship back then and we decided to be friends again, it’s not like we’re… you guys are horrible and I hate all of you.”

That did nothing to stop the avalanche of giggles and chuckles coming his way. And especially not when Emma stood up and walked up to him with a very serious expression on her face.

“But, Daddy,” she said. “You said that Jo was your girl friend.”

Dean might as well have moved to California and made entirely new friends right then because like hell these ones were going to ever let him live that down. For now, they laughed in his face for five minutes straight until Claire demanded to have some dessert. Meg produced an actually pretty tasty strawberry cake and then finally, they dropped the topic and talked about Sam’s job (“You know I can’t disclose any details, but we’re handling this crazy lawsuit with a drone and a cat…”). Of course, Dean should have known it was only a temporary truce.

When they were done, Meg and Jess declared they were staying behind with the girls to have some coffee while Castiel picked everything up and washed the dishes.

“Those are the rules, Clarence: I cooked, you wash everything.”

Castiel shrugged, as if he already expected that and hauled his ass to the kitchen. Dean, Sam and Benny followed to “help” even though what they really did was sit around and tease Castiel for being so whipped.

“Well, we’re just trying to set a good example of cooperation for our daughter,” Castiel replied, holding his head as high as he could while he was elbow deep in murky waters and soap. “We’re a team and each must hold their end.”

Dean snorted at that self-help mumbo-jumbo, but it was really hard to make fun of Castiel when he was clearly so proud of how things were going with his family.

“That’s nice. Hey, Cas, question: how much did this house cost you?” Sam asked. No one tried to pretend that question hadn’t come completely out of the blue.

“You’re thinking about buying a house?”

“Yeah… it’s just… now that Mary is growing, our apartment is getting little and… Jess may… sort of… be pregnant again,” he admitted, lowering his gaze to his shoes.

Last time Sam had announced Jess was pregnant, it had been congratulations and cheers all around. This time, they all just stared at him dumbfounded. Castiel even had a dish in his hand and the sponge to scrub stopped midway in the air. Dean was the first to recover.

“Dude, Mary isn’t even a year old!”

“How can she be ‘sort of’ pregnant?” Castiel asked, tilting his head.

“Well, she hasn’t had any morning sickness and the pee stick thing came back negative, but her period is three weeks late so…”

“Lil’ brotha’, that’s TMI,” Benny interrupted him. “We don’t need to know all of that. It’s fine. We get it.”

Sam smiled tensely and opened his mouth but Dean didn’t let him continue: he walked up to him and embraced him tight.

“Hey, congratulations man,” he told him. “Perhaps this time we get to have boy.”

“Uh, thanks,” Sam said, a little awkwardly. “You do realize we’re not raising our kids in community, don’t you?”

They all stopped to reflect upon those words for a second.

“No, we kinda are,” Dean pointed out.

“We definitely are,” Castiel agreed.

Benny nodded along and they all had a good laugh.

Later, once the dishes were done and after Meg and Jess took enough pictures of the three girls snuggling together in the couch, Dean picked up Emma and Benny asked if he could give him a ride.

“I could call a cab, but if you can drop me off on the way there…”

“It’s no problem, man.”

Emma mumbled something when he adjusted her belt in the back seat, but she promptly fell asleep again as soon as the car hit the road.

“Such a pretty lil’ angel,” Benny commented and Dean smiled proudly. And that was the end of his truce: “So you and Blondie, huh?”

“It’s not like that,” Dean repeated tiredly and pretty sure that Benny wasn’t going to believe him anymore now. “You know, she’s over there and I’m over here and we… we talk a lot on the phone, whenever she’s not working and it’s… it’s nice. I like her company. That’s all.”

He didn’t take his eyes off the road, but he could feel Benny’s skepticism prickling in his skin. It was almost as if he knew Dean was understating a lot of things. Because the truth was that Dean sent her good morning texts and pictures of Emma’s hairdo and dresses that she would wear that day (Emma loved posing for them). Jo called almost every night and she talked to Emma and after Dean tucked his daughter into bed, she called again and the two talked about their days, about their lives, until late into the night. In more than one occasion Dean had woken up with the phone stuck to his cheek because he had fallen asleep while talking to her.

She was happy, at least for what she let on. Her eyes lit up when she talked about the days at the recording studio and recently, she had informed him they were going to do a string of shows outside of LA. It wasn’t a tour, per se, just some small shows so the audience they had gathered when they toured with Fall Out Boy didn’t forget about them.

“It’s going to be so much fun,” she’d said, excitedly. “It’s like going on a road trip, you know, we all get in the bus and we sing songs on the way there.”

“Sounds wonderful.”

“I… I don’t know if I can call you, though,” she’d added, her smile faltering a little bit. “Our cellphones don’t always have bars and the shows are going to be late at night…”

“Hey, no, don’t worry about it. You do you. I’m sure it’s gonna be great.”

And now they hadn’t talked for two nights and Dean missed her like hell. And that was the truth he wasn’t admitting to his friend because it was painful: it had only taken one night together and some calls during which they didn’t even talk about the future to unbury all the feelings he’d had for her and get him thinking about moving to California. He didn’t need anybody to tell him he was acting like a teenager with a crush instead of a grown ass man with a kid.

But even though he didn’t say those things out loud, Benny understood them anyway.

“After Lydia passed, I never imagined you falling for anybody else.”

“Neither did I,” Dean replied, absent-mindedly. He stopped at a red light and realized just exactly what he had said. “I mean… it’s not like I…”

“Chief, it’s fine,” Benny interrupted him before Dean could start again with his string of excuses. “You’ve always been the kind to put others in front of yourself. You did it with Sammy. You’ve been doing everything right for your little girl. You helped me, you helped Madeleine. But in doing all of that, you’ve sort of… got stuck where you were. Not just with your life, but with your grief.”

That made more sense than Dean was really willing to admit.

“You ain’t betraying Lydia’s memory or anything like that…”

“I know that, too,” Dean said. “Doesn’t change the fact we live away and… I’m not even sure if I could call her my girlfriend. It’s… it’s complicated,” he said, using Jo’s word because he couldn’t think up of a better one.

They rolled down Benny’s street and stop right in front of his apartment. Benny didn’t reach for the door handle, as if he thought finishing this conversation was more important.

“You could change that.”

“How, asking her to come back?” Dean let out humorless chuckle.

“Or going to her,” Benny corrected him. “You said your job could give you a transfer.”

“Benny, come on. You know I can’t leave…”

“Why? What’s keeping you here?” Benny asked. “Your house? You could sell it and make enough to pay off the mortgage. The kid? She’s young. She’ll adapt. Us? I mean, I know you think you have to keep an eye on all of us, but we’re adults. We can take care of ourselves. Even I’m better than I was a year ago.”

“Yeah, but you were so messed up there was no way to go but up.”

Benny ignored the joke.

“Lydia?”

Dean swallowed hard and refused to look at his friend. Benny understood anyway.

“She’s not there, you know? It’s just a headstone.”

“I know that, I know,” Dean mumbled. “I… after she died, though, it felt like she was still there. I talked to her picture and it felt like she was still with me, listening to me even if she couldn’t answer…”

He got choked up and had to stop. Benny discreetly gave him a second or two to recover before he asked:

“And now?”

“I don’t know,” Dean admitted. “I haven’t felt like she’s around for a while.”

And as much as it pained him, that was the truth.

Benny nodded and patted him on the shoulder.

“Look, I can’t tell you what to do, brotha’. But, speaking as a guy who lost his wife because he couldn’t reach into his ass far enough to find his head–” Dean laughed and Benny beamed before he finished imparting his wisdom: “–if she makes you happy, then you shouldn’t give up before you even tried.”

 “Yeah,” Dean said, although he didn’t know if he was saying ‘ _Yeah, she makes me happy_ ’ or ‘ _Yeah, I know I have to make a decision about this_ ’. Both were true. “Thank you, Benny.”

Benny got out of the car and waved at him before walking into his building.

The silence on the way back home unnerved Dean, because now he was alone with Benny’s words and his own thoughts. He was tempted to turn on the radio, but Emma was sleeping so peacefully he didn’t dare to. So by the time they got home, Dean was really agitated and all he wanted to do was go to bed and not having to think about anything until the morning. He managed to keep his cool until he got Emma out of the backseat and into her bed (she stirred when he picked her up, but didn’t really wake). But after he switched the lights off, he stood on the hallway with his heart pumping hard in his chest and tears swelling up in his eyes. Dammit, he wasn’t planning on going through this emotional rollercoaster that night.

He almost ran into his bedroom, as if Emma’s spider was right behind him and trying to eat him. He opened the nightstand’s drawer and took out Lydia’s portrait. Now that he thought about it, he really couldn’t remember the last time he had done that. And when he opened his mouth, the words just didn’t come to him as they always did. Just more choked up sobs he didn’t know how to stop. He hid his face in the palm of his hands and stayed there, trying to collect himself for longer that he would’ve liked to admit.

After a while, he managed to calm down. His voice was still shaking a little when he asked:

“What am I supposed to do?”

Lydia didn’t answer. She just stayed in her portrait, eternally smiling, eternally beautiful. But there wasn’t any heaviness in his chest when he stared at her. There was longing and maybe that was never going to go away. But now that he’d cried, now that he’d let it out… he didn’t feel like something was weighing him down anymore.

It was half past midnight and he didn’t know when it had got so late. He toyed with his phone in his hand for a moment, hesitating. He realized he never called Jo. She always called him and he thought that was so she could choose when to speak with them. But if he was being honest with himself (and that night seemed to be the night to do just that) it was because a part of him was convinced she wasn’t going to. That she was going to realize what a crappy deal this was and stop calling one of those days. But that was selfish and cowardly of him. Another cowardly thing he did was calling her traditionally instead of Face-timing her because he didn’t want her to notice he’d been crying.

The phone rang two times before Jo answered.

“Hello?”

It was such a relief to hear her voice that for an entire second he didn’t know how to react.

“Hi, it’s me…”

“Yes, I know, I saw your name on the screen,” Jo replied and Dean laughed. “What’s up?”

“Nothing, I just…I wanted to check in on you. I’m not… I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

“No, the show ended an hour ago. I was actually thinking about calling you because… well, I think Ash is having an orgy in the room next door and I can’t sleep. But I didn’t know if you were still up.”

“I’m definitely still up,” Dean said and immediately decided he needed to stop clarifying the obvious. “To tell you the truth, I was feeling a little lonely. I missed you.”

“Yeah,” Jo muttered, as if she completely understood where he was coming from. “I miss your face, too. And I miss Emma. How is she?”

They talked for two hours about the things they had been doing, laugh at each other’s jokes and at one point, Jo placed the phone against the wall so Dean could her the strange noises coming from Ash’s room.

“It sounds more like Satanic ritual than orgy to me.”

“I know, right?” Jo chuckled. “And Charlie and Dorothy sleep like logs, so it’s not like I can wake them up to bother them… okay, I think it’s ending now.”

“You should go to sleep then. You have a long drive in the morning.”

Jo stayed in silence for such a long time that Dean had to check on his phone that the call hadn’t accidentally ended.

“Do we really have to hang up?” she asked, in a whisper. “You know, after we do, I feel… melancholic. Nostalgic. I want you to be here. With me. And it’s selfish because I know you have your life over there and I can’t ask you… but I just…”

“Jo, it’s… I know exactly what you mean,” he confessed. “But it’s not always going to be like this. I’m sure of it.”

He wasn’t sure that Jo believed him. But after they hanged up, he held the phone against his lips, almost as if he could send her a kiss across the distance. And he stared at the darkness of his room for a very long time.

 

* * *

 

“Well, to be honest with you, you were one of the people we were thinking about approaching about this. We didn’t have much hope that you would accept, though.”

“Why’s that?”

Naomi intertwined her fingers on the desk. She was a very serious woman and to be honest, she reminded Dean of his strictest teachers at school, with her brown hair tied up in a ban and her grey pantsuit. If it was up to him, he usually avoided her, but she was the head of HR and she probably had a saying on who the company could or couldn’t move. Besides, she famously hated Zachariah. He figured she was the person he needed to be talking to about his possibilities.

“You seemed… content right where you are,” she explained. “You’ve passed up promotions before, some of them really good ones…”

“Yes, I’m aware of that,” Dean said. “But some things are changing for me and I really think this might be the best next step for my career and my life.”

Naomi arched an eyebrow. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking exactly, if she was impressed or merely surprise by his directness. But he still grabbed a folder from one of her drawers and opened it.

“Well, in that case, let’s talk about the differences between your current position and the one you would be assuming should you decide to go ahead with this.”

It was a long, but productive reunion. By the time Dean exited Naomi’s office, his head was buzzing with statistics and numbers of how much his salary would increase. But he was glad for it as he returned to his office and checked to find a message from Sam. He re-read it a couple of times to be certain of what it said before hitting the call button.

“Heya, little brother,” he said, smiling. “Congratulations!”

“Thank you,” Sam sighed. “We’re a bit freaked out, to be honest with you.”

“No, no, no freaking out. This is a good thing. How about you, the missus and the kid come to have dinner with me tonight?”

“Are you sure? We wouldn’t want to cause you any troubles…”

“No, not all. I always love to have you guys home and we won’t see you until we come back from Madeleine’s anyway. And I also have some news to share with you.”

Sam went quiet for a second, as if he was processing just what Dean had told him.

“What kind of news?”

“I could tell you, but that would ruin the surprise. So, you’ll come?”

“Of course. We’ll be there.”

Dean spent the last half hour of his job writing down the list of things he needed to buy and mentally planning dinner. Emma was so excited to hear that Sam, Jess and Mary were coming over that she climbed on the shopping cart even though Dean repeatedly told her not to.

“Baby girl, come on. Stay put.”

“But I want to help too!” Emma insisted.

“Alright, fine,” Dean sighed. “We’re going to need two onions and three tomatoes. Do you think you can get that from the veggie aisle?

Emma scrunched up her nose when she heard the word “veggie”, but she nodded and left to fulfill her mission with almost comical determination. Dean watched her carefully weigh and squeeze the tomatoes on her hands like she would know if they were good or not and decided that she wasn’t too little to try to help with the dinner. He didn’t let her anywhere near the stove or the knives, but he did let her squash the tomatoes to make the sauce and taught her how to make meatballs.

“Okay, so you just roll it on the bread crumbs… that’s right, very good, Emma!”

Emma looked incredibly proud of herself standing on the stool Dean had placed near the counter for her to stand up. She had tied her blonde hair up in a ponytail and she was donning her plastic pink apron from the kindergarten, which Dean had no idea if it did anything to protect her clothes from any spilling, but she looked amazingly cute on it. It was easy to tell which meatballs she did because they were bigger and a little wonky, but Dean swore to himself he was going to eat them all and act like they were the most delicious thing he had ever tasted in his life.

“This is so much fun!” she commented as she placed the meatballs on the platter. “Do you think we can cook for Nana when we visit?”

“Sure, if she let us…”

“And for Jo, too?” she asked immediately after. “Because we’re going to see her also when we go to California, aren’t we, daddy?”

“Yes,” Dean said, smiling to himself. “I definitely think we’re going to see her. Hey, do you want us to send a picture to her to show her how we’re cooking?”

“Yeah!”

Emma posed with her apron and then he sent her to set up the table and open the door while he finished making the pasta. Sam and Jess clapped and were appropriately enthusiastic when he announced to them how Emma had helped. And the dinner went excellently well, with Mary only spilling a little bit of sauce in the mantelpiece, up until the point where they mentioned to Emma that she was going to have another little cousin soon. It suddenly clicked on her that babies had to come from _somewhere_ and she was mortifyingly interested in finding out where that place was.

“So I have to wait until next year to meet her?”

“Or him. It could be a boy,” Sam corrected.

“But where is she in the meantime?” Emma continued, completely disregarding Sam. “How do you know she’s coming?”

“Well, a baby has to spend some time growing in their mommy’s belly before they can be born, sweetie,” Dean explained to her. “Nine months, to be exact.”

“That is the longest time ever!” Emma complained. “But wait, how does the baby get inside of the belly?”

“That’s… actually, that is… it’s sort of complicated, Emma, and it’s almost your bed time,” Dean said, hoping that Sam and Jess would stop laughing. He made the resolution to embarrass them equally when Mary was old enough to understand those things. “So… maybe we can talk about this tomorrow?”

Emma narrowed her eyes at him, but muttered “Okay” and obediently kissed her aunt and uncle before marching upstairs. Dean hoped she would forget the issue in the morning. As if that had ever happened before.

“They grow so fast,” Jess commented between chuckles.

“I really thought you already had the bees and the birds talk with her, Dean.”

“You’re horrible people, you know that?”

They didn’t look guilty at all.

Dean went to check up on Emma and then came back down to make some coffee for everybody.

“So now that is official, you’re definitely thinking about buying a house, right?”

“Well, we’ve been thinking about it since Mary started walking,” Jess clarified, eyeing the couch where her daughter was peacefully asleep. “We didn’t realize the apartment and her room were so small.”

“Yeah, and I would like the kids to have some space where they can run,” Sam continued. “Maybe a backyard so we can have a dog…”

“Which we will not get until they’re old enough to understand the responsibility of having a pet,” Jess added. Dean had the impression that this was a discussion they’d had repeatedly.

“How about this place?”

“Yeah, a house like this would be fantastic,” Sam nodded. “Do you know if there’s someplace they’re selling nearby?”

“No, I mean, literally this place,” Dean clarified. “Would you guys like to live here? ‘Cause I can sell it to you.”

It was worth it just to see their stunned faces for several seconds.

“Dean…”

“What are you saying? Where would _you_ live?”

He explained it to them: about the company, about Los Angeles, about how he was thinking about taking their offer. Their dumbfounded expressions didn’t change one bit.

“… Naomi said the transfer could take some months, maybe up to year, so you have time to come up with the money. I know it’s a big change,” he concluded. “But it’s… it’s just something that feels right for me, you know?”

“Is this about Jo?” Sam asked. “Because you cannot put your entire life aside and uproot your daughter for…”

“Sammy, Sam, let me stop you right there,” Dean interrupted him. “Everything you’re about to say, I’ve already thought about it. Trust me, I’ve thought about it probably more than you can even imagine. And it’s not about Jo. Well, it is, sort of, but not in the way you think. It’s about me… getting unstuck. Moving on. And I know there’s a lot for me to figure out still, but… this is the first step I gotta take.”

They still stared at him like he had suddenly started rambling about the end of the world, but they eventually came around.

“Okay, well, then, that is… that is great, Dean.” Jess moved her hand across the table to pat him in the forearm and smiled. “I’m so glad you feel that way. And I’m so glad you made us this offer. Because I know how much this house means to you and I know you wouldn’t want just anyone to have it.”

Sam still didn’t look convince about the whole ordeal, but he still hugged Dean very tight while Jess tied Mary to the baby chair in the backseat of the car.

“Are you sure about this?”

“Who is sure about anything?” Dean chuckled. “But, yeah, I am. I… this is what I want. For Emma and for me.”

Sam studied his face as if he was trying to determine if Dean was just saying it or if he truly meant it.

“You know, we’ll be here for you,” he told him. “All of us. For whatever you need us.”

Dean smiled. Not only because it was reassuring to hear it, but because he remembered telling something very similar to Jo once before she left.

“Thanks, little brother.”

He stood on the porch until they went away and leaned against the door. There was just one more person he needed to talk to about this.

 

* * *

 

“You got everyone, baby girl?”

“Yes!” Emma assured him. “Raggedy and Rosie and Mr. Eight. They’re all here.”

“Great.” Dean smiled at her and opened the passenger’s door. “Get in.”

Emma’s eyes glimmered with desire, but she still hesitated.

“I’m not supposed to travel in the front seat,” she whispered.

“Well, I think you’re old enough to go shotgun,” Dean said. “But you still have to put on your seatbelt, okay?”

“Okay!”

Her excitement and happiness were the most beautiful things in the entire world. Dean double-checked that the seatbelt was correctly adjusted and he started the car. For a while, the only voices in the car came from the songs on the stereo, as Emma was too busy with her nose stuck on the window, watching the neighborhood rolled away in their window.

“Do you think I can get a kite this year, daddy? Can you teach me to fly it?”

“Yes, of course. It’ll be great,” Dean said. He cleared his throat and took a deep breath: “You know, your mom liked kites too. And fireworks. Every Fourth of July, she just loved to watch them go off.”

Emma’s eyes grew wider as she stared at her died with her mouth agape.

“Really?”

“Yep. Actually, she just loved to look at the sky all the time. And she loved cats, too. She would’ve had one, if it wasn’t because I’m allergic to them.”

“I like cats _and_ I’m allergic to them!” Emma exclaimed.

Dean chuckled and breathed in deeply. He already felt the tears accumulating inside of his throat, but he wasn’t going to let them win. Not this time.

“What else would you like to know about her?”

Emma though about this very careful. Past experience had taught her this was a topic that was best approached carefully, but Dean was giving her free rein to ask whatever she wanted and she wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity.

“What was her favorite ice cream?”

“Strawberry. She also liked actual strawberries. She used to drink strawberry smoothies all the time when you were in her belly.”

The rest of the trip went on like that. Emma eagerly asked all sort of questions about Lydia, about what she liked to do, what were her favorite things, what she liked to wear, what she preferred to do in rainy days and sunny days. Sometimes she made such detailed questions that Dean had to scratch the back of his brain for the answers. Lydia loved to run, she had been captain of the track team in school and college (“Perhaps you can ask Nana to show you her medals”) and she ran whether it was sunny or rainy. She was a teacher, but she had quit to have Emma. She did love her job, though, because she planned on taking it up again when Emma was older. She loved to wear sundresses. She was a messy person who left her things everywhere. She laughed a lot.

Emma went quiet and Dean realized his eyes were wet. He quickly wiped them with the back of his hand and smiled at Emma.

“I miss her a lot. Do you know what that means, Emma?”

“It means you wish she was here,” Emma explained, with a very serious face. “It’s how I feel about Nana. And about Jo.”

“Yes, that is exactly what it is,” Dean nodded. He went quiet for a moment. “But she isn’t here. We are, though. And we have each other.”

“And we have all our boy friends and girl friends,” she added.

“We do have them,” Dean agreed. “And they’re all very important. But you are the most important person for me, baby girl.”

He saw a Biggerson’s sign ahead and stopped for lunch. He had the impression the next part of the conversation would be best if they had it face to face.

Emma picked a Surprise Box that had a plastic violet pony inside, but she barely paid attention to it. It was as if she knew that conversation with her father wasn’t quite done yet.

“How would you like to live in California?” he asked her.

“Near the sea?” she asked, her eyes growing wider.

“Yes, near the sea. But also, near Nana and Jo.”

Emma beamed like that was the greatest idea ever. But immediately, she lowered her gaze, crestfallen.

“But then we wouldn’t be near Ben and Claire. And Uncle Sam and Uncle Jess. And Mary.”

“No, we wouldn’t be, physically. But let me tell you a little thing that took me years to learn: some people, no matter how far away they are, are always with you. Right here.” He poked at Emma’s chest with a finger and Emma laughed and skittered in her chair. “And that’s why sometimes we can miss them, but we can always find them again.”

Emma tilted her head at him, as if she wasn’t entirely sure what he was talking about.

“You’ll understand some day,” he concluded. “And you don’t have to decide right now. We can talk it over and adjust some details, okay?”

“Okay,” Emma agreed and her seriousness disappeared quickly. “Are we going to see Jo?”

“Yeah.” He smiled. “We’ll see her soon.”

 

* * *

 

It had been a pretty long day. So long, in fact, that Jo was all but falling asleep on the couch of the recording studio when her phone chirped again. Dean had been texting her all day, telling her about how he was in the beach with Emma and Madeleine, and asking about the studio and how it was. Jo appreciated his interest, she really did. It was just hard to appreciate anything that wasn’t bed-shaped when Dorothy and Ash had been bickering about a riff since breakfast.

“I’m not saying it’s not cool and you can’t include it. I’m just saying you don’t have to record an entire track just for it.”

“It has its own flow, Dotty-B,” Ash replied, looking at their manager with eyes like those of a puppy that had been kicked. “You can’t just chop it off and put it in the middle of a song.”

It was true. They had tried and it hadn’t fit anywhere else. Jo was just kind of hoping it would work well with some of the other songs they had already written, but that day, nothing seemed to be working out.

“Don’t call me Dotty-B,” Dorothy protested, but unlike the other first hundred times she had asked him that. Jo had the impression Ash was gonna get away with calling her that out of sheer insistence.

“Maybe we can tag it at the end of a song?” Charlie suggested.

“Yeah, yeah, that way it can totally stand on its own,” Garth agreed.

“I’ll just write some new lyrics for it,” Jo huffed, still stretched out in the couch and refusing to raise her head to look at her bandmates. “We still need a couple more songs to go anyway.”

She had her arm over her eyes and refused to move it. She refused to move until all of them had settled their differences and she could go home and call Dean and continue the debate about the riff when she wasn’t feeling the early stages of a migraine in the back of her head.

They all seemed to realize they were getting nowhere with her, because a shadow fell over her. Dorothy made her remove her arm and looked at her from above.

“Jo, go home,” she told him. “You’re done with your part and you’re obviously dying. We can continue in the morning.”

“Okay,” Jo sighed. She texted Dean to tell him she was going to call him soon and jumped up. “I’ll see you later.”

There were maybe half a dozen people waiting for her outside. Since the band now had official social media, people knew where they were recording and it wasn’t strange that they would come to say hi if they liked the band. What she still found strange though was that some of them actually asked them to sign things up, like shirts or the EP they had actually bought for them.

“Thank you, guys,” she said, smiling at them and shaking their hands. “I’ll see you at the concert.”

She was about to turn around to look for a taxi when a voice made her stop in her tracks:

“What, no autograph for us?”

Jo turned on her heels so fast it was a miracle her neck didn’t break from the whiplash. For a fraction of a second, she was certain she was hallucinating. She was exhausted and her brain was showing her exactly what she wanted to see.

But then he smiled and there was no way in Hell her tired mind could reproduce that with such accuracy.

“Hi, Jo,” Emma said, hanging from her dad’s hand and looking at her with enormous green eyes.

Jo ran the short distance separating her from them so fast she almost stumbled at the last second. She crashed against Dean’s chest, but it didn’t matter, because he caught her. His arms surrounded her hips and she hanged onto his shoulders, barely realizing her feet were no longer touching the ground. He spun her around laughing, the crinkles around his eyes deep and adorable as always.

“Me next!” Emma demanded, raising her arms and laughing at this game. “Spin me next!”

Jo leaned over to pick her up at the same time Dean put an arm around her shoulders and pulled them both closer to him. Jo hid her face in the neck and let out a laugh of pure happiness.

She didn’t need to go home after all. Not when home had come to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! <3


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